Measuring the safeguards value of material accountability

Conference · Thu Jun 23 04:00:00 EDT 1988

OSTI ID:6885145

Sicherman, A

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. The MA system ''alarms'' when inventory differences exceed acceptable limits or when discrepancies arise between facility records and measured quantities of materials. Since MA alarms are typically too late to prevent theft or diversion of material, it is often difficult to value the safeguards contribution of MA. This paper presents a value model concept for assessing the safeguards benefits of MA activities and for comparing these benefits to those provided by PP and 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 decisionmakers in allocating safeguards resources among PP, MC, and MA systems. 5 refs., 2 figs.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 6885145
• Report Number(s): UCRL-98144; CONF-880631-29; ON: DE88014321
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

055000* -- Nuclear Fuels-- Safeguards
Inspection
& Accountability
055002 -- Nuclear Fuels-- Safeguards
Inspection
& Accountability-- Nontechnical Aspects
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
ACCOUNTABILITY
INVENTORIES
MANAGEMENT
NUCLEAR MATERIALS DIVERSION
NUCLEAR MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
SAFEGUARDS
USES