Temporary Physical Protection Systems

Terrorism and other aspects of world political instability have created a high demand for temporary physical protection systems within the nuclear materials management community. They can be used when vehicles carrying important assets are away from their permanent fixed site location, around areas where experiments are being temporarily conducted, around construction areas, and on portions of a fixed site physical security system which is temporarily inoperable. Physical security systems can be grouped into four categories: tactical, portable, semi-permanent, and fixed. The first three can all be considered to be temporary. The resources and experience gained at Sandia National Laboratories in over forty years of developing and implementing security systems for protecting nuclear weapons and fixed nuclear facilities is now being applied to temporary physical security systems. Tactical security systems are most often used in military applications and are of little interest, in a tactical sense, to the nuclear materials management community; however, many of the component parts are of great interest. Portable systems are selfcontained and considered to be \"fly-away,\" in that they are usually carried with the vehicle or aircraft being protected. Semi-permanent security systems are temporary systems whose components can be deployed for an unspecified period of time and then moved to a new location, both with minimum or no plant engineering support or site preparation. This paper will emphasize temporary physical security systems and their component parts that are presently available and identify additional system-subsystem objectives, requirements, and concepts.