Year
1997
Abstract
This paper presents the concept of a comprehensive nuclear material management and control system. A comprehensive nuclear material management and control system must manage and control material while in any one of the following three stages; transportation, processing or storage. The transportation stage could include inter-site as well as intra-site transportation. The processing stage could be material processing, weapon dismantlement or stockpile maintenance. The storage stage could be short term staging, interim storage or long term storage. Within each of these three stages a comprehensive system needs to address the attributes of safety of materials and operations, international accountability and security. Sandia National Laboratories and Mason & Hanger Corporation are defining a comprehensive material management and control system based on these stages and attributes. The defined system will incorporate technologies in the areas of monitoring systems, sensors, containers, transportation, automated handling, weapon security, information security, networking and database management to provide an integrated system. An integrated comprehensive nuclear material management and control system with a secure database management system would provide applicable real-time information to a plethora of users based on a need to know. Integrating these technologies for a facility such as Pantex could serve as a model for the management and control of nuclear material.