The Application of materials attractiveness in a graded approach to nuclear materials security
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, Livermore, CA 94551 (United States)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
- National Nuclear Security Administration, US Department of Energy, 1000 Independent Ave., S. W. Washington, DC 20585 (United States)
The threat from terrorist groups has recently received greater attention. In this paper, material quantity and material attractiveness are addressed through the lens of a minimum security strategy needed to prevent the construction of a nuclear explosive device (NED) by an adversary. Nuclear materials are placed into specific security categories (3 or 4 categories) , which define a number of security requirements to protect the material. Materials attractiveness can be divided into four attractiveness levels, High, Medium, Low, and Very Low that correspond to the utility of the material to the adversary and to a minimum security strategy that is necessary to adequately protect the nuclear material. We propose a graded approach to materials attractiveness that recognizes for instance substantial differences in attractiveness between pure reactor-grade Pu oxide (High attractiveness) and fresh MOX fuel (Low attractiveness). In either case, an adversary's acquisition of a Category I quantity of plutonium would be a major incident, but the acquisition of Pu oxide by the adversary would be substantially worse than the acquisition of fresh MOX fuel because of the substantial differences in the time and complexity required of the adversary to process the material and fashion it into a NED.
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22257859
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: GLOBAL 2013: International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference - Nuclear Energy at a Crossroads, Salt Lake City, UT (United States), 29 Sep - 3 Oct 2013; Other Information: Country of input: France; 5 refs.; Related Information: In: Proceedings of GLOBAL 2013: International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference - Nuclear Energy at a Crossroads| 1633 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
The efficacy of denaturing actinide elements as a means of decreasing materials attractiveness
LLNL Contribution to Sandia Used Fuel Disposition - Security March 2011 Deliverable