Information-Driven Inspections

Conference · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2010

OSTI ID:990242

Laughter, Mark D ^[1]; Whitaker, J Michael ^[1]; Lockwood, Dunbar ^[2]

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1. ORNL
2. U.S. Department of Energy, NNSA

New uranium enrichment capacity is being built worldwide in response to perceived shortfalls in future supply. To meet increasing safeguards responsibilities with limited resources, the nonproliferation community is exploring next-generation concepts to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of safeguards, such as advanced technologies to enable unattended monitoring of nuclear material. These include attribute measurement technologies, data authentication tools, and transmission and security methods. However, there are several conceptual issues with how such data would be used to improve the ability of a safeguards inspectorate such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to reach better safeguards conclusions regarding the activities of a State. The IAEA is pursuing the implementation of information-driven safeguards, whereby all available sources of information are used to make the application of safeguards more effective and efficient. Data from continuous, unattended monitoring systems can be used to optimize on-site inspection scheduling and activities at declared facilities, resulting in fewer, better inspections. Such information-driven inspections are the logical evolution of inspection planning - making use of all available information to enhance scheduled and randomized inspections. Data collection and analysis approaches for unattended monitoring systems can be designed to protect sensitive information while enabling information-driven inspections. A number of such inspections within a predetermined range could reduce inspection frequency while providing an equal or greater level of deterrence against illicit activity, all while meeting operator and technology holder requirements and reducing inspector and operator burden. Three options for using unattended monitoring data to determine an information-driven inspection schedule are to (1) send all unattended monitoring data off-site, which will require advances in data analysis techniques to determine optimal thresholds; (2) have all separate unattended systems send individual go/no-go signals, allowing the inspectorate to know exactly which systems are exceeding their thresholds; and (3) develop a data aggregation system with attribute monitoring algorithms that would send a single go/no-go or other status signal off-site. Since the data in all of these options are used to inform on-site inspections (which will revert to randomized inspections if no thresholds are reached), the thresholds for the unattended systems can be set much closer to declared operating parameters than in current unattended monitoring systems.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
• Sponsoring Organization: NNSA USDOE - National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 990242
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
ALGORITHMS
AVAILABILITY
CAPACITY
DATA ANALYSIS
EFFICIENCY
IAEA
IMPLEMENTATION
ISOTOPE SEPARATION
MONITORING
ON-SITE INSPECTION
PROLIFERATION
SAFEGUARDS
SCHEDULES
SECURITY