Bilateral U.S. and Russian Remote Monitoring System for Special Nuclear Materials

In the context of U.S. and Russian laboratory-to-laboratory initiatives, Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico contracted with the Kurchatov Institute Russian Research Center in Moscow to demonstrate the feasibility of remotely monitoring the storage of nuclear material. The cooperative experiment was to demonstrate the remote monitoring system with a minimum of 10 kg of highly enriched uranium in storage at reciprocal facilities. The Kurchatov Institute selected a site at their facility, and the U.S. Department of Energy selected a site at the Argonne National Laboratory-West facility. At Kurchatov, there is material stored in a floor vault, storage cabinet, and shipping containers. At Argonne-West, material is stored in two types of storage systems. The monitoring system as implemented is discussed in this paper. This technology provides the capability of remotely monitoring the access to the stored nuclear materials but is not designed as a real-time security alarm system. Several next steps have been identified for possible expansion of the remote monitoring system.