Year
1971
Abstract
Proper account of human factors is central to the success of safeguarding nuclear materials. Overall, Safeguards will involve the many facets of a vast industry with its activities monitored by both national and international agencies. Human factors are important at virtually every point in this extensive network, of Safeguards ranging over deciding the reliability of inspections, motivation of diverters, timing of inspections, degree of enforcement, decisions of whether irregularities have occurred, and countless others. To evaluate the ever-present human factor in this complex technical and political undertaking requires talents of specialists in a variety of broadly differing disciplines. Whereas these can, in principle, be collected at any institution, a university continually requires their presence. This paper reviews the progress being made at Kansas State University in its Diversion Safeguards Program, a program which emphasizes the human factors. This program orientation resulted from original plans to concentrate on those interdisciplinary areas where a university-based program has distinct advantages—compared to alternative programs by industry or by governmental agencies. As reviewed in the following sections, much of the program at Kansas State University involves undertakings of survey research to establish in a quantitative manner the attitudes and concerns held by persons involved in nuclear materials management. Of similar importance are calculations for improving the monitoring effectiveness through the fuel cycle. In the final analysis, this monitoring effectiveness depends on human factors, and so attitudes and concerns discerned by the survey will naturally be incorporated into the calculations of effectiveness. Also described are our allied studies, which include typologies of persons likely to divert nuclear materials, an improved method for plutonium assay, and the processes by which nations come to nuclear agreements.