New & Improved Meteorological Data Archives

1. New & Improved Meteorological Data Archives Kenneth G. Wastrack Jennifer M. Call D. Sherea Burns Tennessee Valley Authority

2. Data Storage Requirements • Regulatory Guide 1.23, revision 1 • Requires meteorological data to be collected & describes desired formats. • ANS-3.11 • Specifies retention of raw meteorological data for a minimum of 5 years, & validated data for the life of the facility.

3. Data Storage Requirements (cont.) • SPP-5.9 • This is an internal Nuclear Power Group, TVA document. • Identifies calibration & maintenance history records for meteorological monitoring equipment, & meteorological joint frequency distribution data as QA records which shall be retained for a minimum of 75 years (& until concurrence for disposal is received from the TVA Office of the General Counsel). • Meteorological Data are not explicitly identified as QA records. However, since the output from applications that use the data are QA records, this implicitly requires the associated meteorological data to be QA records as well.

4. Data Collection & Processing Environmental Data Stations • Collect the raw data & perform processing into summaries. • Transmit the data to the plant control room, the offsite Emergency Operations Facility & a Remote Access Computer (RAC) for validation & archiving.

5. Data Collection & Processing (cont.)

6. Why Change? • In 2007 two coinciding events made obvious the need for change: • A realignment of work activities caused the data validation function to be reassigned to staff unfamiliar with the Mainframe computer. • TVA announced the planned retirement of the Mainframe computer. • Historically, in order to conserve storage space meteorological data were converted into binary format which required special software to extract data into a “useable” format & were available to a limited number of users.

7. Why Change? (cont.) • TVA has collected meteorological data since the 1950’s (at nuclear sites since the 1970’s) & since that time computer & data systems have changed significantly, numerous times, causing inconsistencies in the data. • DOCUMENTATIONof particularly the older data was not adequate & in some cases critical information took the form of handwritten notes on faded paper.

8. Changes Needed • File conversion to ASCII format for transportability across platforms & computer systems • Data tag & format consistency • Data consolidation into a single common location • Better DOCUMENTATION

9. Actions Taken • ID & collect all relevant data files. • Copy data files from the mainframe. • Retrieve data that was never placed on the mainframe (PC-based files). • Review available documentation & determine the contents of the data files & label the data values. • In cases of multiple towers at a particular location, we had to identify which specific data applied to which station & consolidate the data into a common set of files that were consistently formatted.

10. Actions Taken (cont.) • Existing data applications that used customized data formats were adapted to use the new files. • Extensive DOCUMENTATION was prepared describing the conversion process & the new archival system.

11. New Archival Data Storage • Data are stored on a network drive accessible by various computer systems & by authorized users from anywhere on the TVA network. • Regular data back-ups to an offsite location & copies for QA records storage. • Data are in ASCII format to allow users to directly view the information & permit multi-platform access.

12. Future Activities • Make data available to more users through a web-based method. • Expand auto-screening techniques to older data, currently performed on more recent data, for completeness & to allow review of extreme data limits. • Additional DOCUMENTATION to describe instrumentation characteristics, data collection methodologies, etc. • Locate & store any additional data such as data presently available only in hardcopy form.

13. Lessons Learned • Develop a common data format & convert all files for consistency which will allow the use of common data processing & analysis software. • DOCUMENTATION – Describe data formats & provide relevant information about data collection & processing.