Recent Development in the area of Containment and Surveillance : Application of field bus technology for designing Integrated Safeguard Systems

A recent development has been undertaken in the area of containment and surveillance. Its objective was to integrate data from various sensors in a comprehensive architecture. We considered sensors that are usually used to ensure the security of radioactive materials : motion detection sensors, radiation device, camera, seals. Correlating data from these sensors may improve the global efficiency of the safeguards system. Several technical solutions have been studied before focusing on the concept of smart sensors (i.e. sensors able to achieve local algorithm to analyze data, to send and read data from other sensors, to send state of health status, to integrate other informations like serial number, name of manufacturer...), and network of sensors. A first application with a camera, on/off sensors and a radiation sensor, had been developed using such a field network based on FIP technology (Factory Instrumentation Protocol). FIP is a normalized and open protocol, dedicated to industrial environment, that enables communication between smart sensors and actuators on a network. Both economic and technical considerations (redundancy, EMC resistance for example), demonstrate that this is a suitable choice for integrated safeguards systems.