COLLABORATIVE RUSSIAN-US WORK IN NUCLEAR MATERIAL PROTECTION, CONTROL AND ACCOUNTING AT THE INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS AND POWER ENGINEERING

Year
1995
Author(s)
Leslie G. Fishbone - Brookhaven National Laboratory
C. Ruth Kempf - Brookhaven National Laboratory
Mark Rowland - Livermore National Laboratory
John A. Blasy - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Wayne Ruhter - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
John R. Phillips - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Susan Voss - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Rob York - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Cheryl Rodriguez - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Igor P. Matveenko - State Scientific Center Institute of Physics and Power Engineering
Vladimir K. Mozhaev - State Scientific Center Institute of Physics and Power Engineering
Yu. Kulabukhov - State Scientific Center Institute of Physics and Power Engineering
Vladimir Dvukhsherstnov - State Scientific Center Institute of Physics and Power Engineering
Kenneth R. Byers - Pacific Northwest Laboratory
Gregory Sheppard - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Roger A. Vogel - Sandia National Laboratories
Kate Baur - U.S. Department of Energy/Pacific Northwest Laboratory
Abstract
The Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) is a leading research center under the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation. IPPE encompasses many installations and many specialists who perform fundamental and applied investigations in nuclear power and technology for the national nuclear program. IPPE has a key role in the national nuclear material protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A) system both as a nuclear facility and also as a training center for MPC&A. As a participant in the US-Russian Laboratory-to-Laboratory Cooperative Program in MPC&A, IPPE is conducting several tasks in collaboration with US Department of Energy national laboratories. The main goal of these tasks is the rapid improvement of MPC&A at one of the most sensitive operating IPPE installations, the BFS critical facility, which has large numbers of fuel items containing highly enriched uranium and weaponsgrade plutonium. After the completion of several test, evaluation, and demonstration tasks, it is hoped that the tested and adopted methods and procedures can be applied not only to the entire population of BFS fuel items, but also to other facilities at IPPE and other Russian nuclear institutes and operating facilities. The collaborative tasks cover seven areas: computerized nuclear material accounting, entry control and portals, item control and inventory, design evaluation and analysis, gamma and neutron assay, an integrated demonstration, and physical protection elements and test bed.