System engineering workstations - critical tool in addressing waste storage, transportation, or disposal
Brian W. Mar · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society · 1987
The ability to create, evaluate, operate, and manage waste storage, transportation, and disposal systems (WSTDSs) is greatly enhanced when automated tools are available to support the generation of the voluminous mass of documents and data associated with the system engineering of the program. A system engineering workstation is an optimized set of hardware and software that provides such automated tools to those performing system engineering functions. This paper explores the functions that need to be performed by a WSTDS system engineering workstation. While the latter stages of a major WSTDS may require a mainframe computer and specialized software systems, most of the required system engineering functions can be supported by a system engineering workstation consisting of a personnel computer and commercial software. These findings suggest system engineering workstations for WSTDS applications will cost less than $5000 per unit, and the payback on the investment can be realized in a few months. In most cases the major cost element is not the capital costs of hardware or software, but the cost to train or retrain the system engineers in the use of the workstation and to ensure that the system engineering functions are properly conducted.