Auditable evidence packages for fusion licensability in maintenance and hot cell operations

Abstract

Abstract

Background: Fusion is moving from experimental machines to first-of-a-kind facilities where regulators, investors, and host communities will expect a clear demonstration of radiological safety. In practice, the critical point is often not the steady-state plant, but the work that happens when people and equipment have to go in: maintenance, inspection, recovery, decontamination, and hot cell processing. Objectives: Provide a technology-neutral, auditable framework for radiological safety licensability that is proportionate to maturity. The goal is predictable regulation: clear claims, clear evidence expectations, and explicit gates as a design matures and early operations begin. Methods: The author structures licensability around an evidence package. Top-level safety claims are broken down into a small number of argument lines that cover operating states, including maintenance, hazards and inventories, and the envelope of credible events from design basis through more challenging conditions. Each line is backed by named supporting evidence such as models, tests, procedures, and demonstrations under configuration control. Results: The paper provides a developer's checklist that links claims to evidence, verification approach, and maturity gates. It also highlights Occupational Radiation Exposure analysis as an integrating stream that connects maintenance concepts, remote operations, hot cell throughput, and radiological source terms into a traceable exposure rationale. Conclusion: A graded, goal-setting approach for fusion works best when it is anchored in a defined evidence package. That package makes the intended safety claims explicit, the supporting evidence auditable, and reduces reliance on informal assumptions about how the plant will really be operated and maintained.