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Measuring the safeguards value of material accountability

Conference · · Nucl. Mater. Manage. Annu. Meet. Proc.; (United States)
OSTI ID:6186571

Material accountability (MA) activities focus on providing after-the-fact indication of diversion or theft of special nuclear material (SNM). MA activities include maintaining records for tracking nuclear material and conducting periodic inventories and audits to ensure that loss has not occurred. This paper presents a value model concept for assessing the safeguards benefits of MA activities and for comparing these benefits to those provided by physical protection (PP) and material control (MC) components. The model considers various benefits of MA, which include: 1) providing information to assist in recovery of missing material, 2) providing assurance that physical protection and material control systems have been working, 3) defeating protracted theft attempts, and 4) properly resolving causes of and responding appropriately to anomalies of missing material and external alarms (e.g., hoax). Such a value model can aid decision-makers in allocating safeguards resources among PP, MC, and MA systems.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab., P.O. Box 808, L-195, Livermore, CA (US)
OSTI ID:
6186571
Report Number(s):
CONF-880631-
Journal Information:
Nucl. Mater. Manage. Annu. Meet. Proc.; (United States), Journal Name: Nucl. Mater. Manage. Annu. Meet. Proc.; (United States) Vol. 17; ISSN NUMMB
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English