KEEPING THE WORLD SAFER FOR GENERATIONS

Nuclear Safeguards

Nuclear material safeguards, particularly measurements using nondestructive assay (NDA) techniques and nuclear material accounting systems, started at Los Alamos in December of 1966, simultaneous with the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Essentially all inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been trained at Los Alamos in hands-on, realistic, standards-based measurements using actual nuclear materials. Los Alamos has trained nuclear materials workers from throughout the DOE complex at NDA courses offered since the 1970s.

Los Alamos invented, developed or improved nearly every IAEA NDA instrument. NDA techniques developed at Los Alamos include neutron multiplicity counting, tomographic gamma-ray scanning, and solid-state calorimetry. In addition to the instruments necessary for Materials Control and Accountability, Los Alamos performed all the original work that established safeguards systems and policy, inventory difference and error analysis, statistics, and key measurement points.

Los Alamos has provided instruments, systems, or consultation at nuclear facilities throughout the DOE complex and in more than 30 countries. Los Alamos is the source or helped deploy most of the hardware and software products used globally to collect the data that ensures a robust nonproliferation regime.

Los Alamos staff members, including the founder of Los Alamos safeguards, G. Robert Keepin, have had a continuous presence in key IAEA positions for more than three decades.

Roughly 1,500 papers have come from the Los Alamos safeguards program, representing the intellectual foundation of nearly all NDA instrumentation, innovative data analysis, and systems analysis in the field.

Nearly every type of safeguards hardware commercially available has its roots at Los Alamos which continues to transfer the latest technology and work in close partnerships with industry leaders.

Los Alamos and its safeguards legacy played a major role in starting the lab-to-lab program with the Russian nuclear complex that grew into the DOE program for Materials Protection, Control and Accountability, and in such follow-on programs as Second Line of Defense and Megaports.

Spin-offs from safeguards technology have benefited DOE waste programs, especially WIPP, homeland security, process monitoring at DOE facilities and even space exploration. Los Alamos safeguards staff and techniques were crucial to the rollback of the nuclear weapons program in Libya.

We’ve already begun working on the next generation of safeguards design, instrumentation, and additional measures that will be needed for the proposed GNEP and other advanced facilities. Integration of intelligence, process monitoring, traditional inventory measurements, and material control and physical protection into a greater unified whole, and HEU detection are candidates for the "next" transformational R&D.

The "bible" of NDA, Passive Nondestructive Assay of Nuclear Materials, was written by Los Alamos and published in 1991. A second edition will be published soon.

Development of the major UNARM software effort was triggered through integration of continuous, unattended NDA installed in process equipment with cameras, part of Los Alamos efforts to marry safeguards NDA equipment to plant process equipment as part of the DYMAC project at TA-55. This innovation was extended to continuous, unattended-mode operation required by IAEA in automated plants in Japan near 20 years ago.

SAFEGUARDS PROGRAM

Roughly 1,500 papers have come from the Los Alamos safeguards program, representing the intellectual foundation of nearly all NDA instrumentation, innovative data analysis, and systems analysis in the field.

Los Alamos has trained nuclear materials workers from throughout the DOE complex at NDA courses offered since the 1970s.