Year
1978
Abstract
The present description covers an electronic sealing system suitable to be utilized for international safeguards and physical protection pur- poses. The VACOSS sealing system (Variable Coding Seal System for Nuclear Material Control) developed by the Juelich Nuclear Research Center is intended to seal rooms and containers with nuclear material, nuclear instru- mentation of the operator as well as of the supervisory authority. The sealing system is easy to handle, reusable, portable and of small size. It consists of the three components: seal, adapter box, and simulation program. The simulation program is located in the office of the supervising agency, permitting the decoding of coded data read out from the seal and, thus, de- termination of the opening and closing events in terms of time. Besides a memory and a statistics generator, the seal essentially comprises a light guide. Unauthorized opening and closing operations are being stored. Two variants of the adapter box are available: one for exclusive use by the supervisory authority, permitting the inspector to read in code data for turning on the seal and to interrogate the coded information on opening and closing events stored in the seal, and one to be used, for instance, by operators, permitting the interrogation of information on the operating condition and integrity of the seal.