Developing An Electronic Distributed Ledger For Transit Matching

In 2016, the Office of International Nuclear Safeguards at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) within the Department of Energy (DOE) commissioned the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to begin an exploration of the potential benefits of blockchain technology, or more broadly, distributed ledger technology (DLT), for international nuclear safeguards. That exploration produced two conceptual studies [1] ,[2] that served as a basis for technical work performed in 2019. One report established a methodology for determining whether specific safeguards use cases might benefit from the technology. The follow-on study applied the methodology to six safeguards use cases and identified transit matching as a promising use case for DLT. Based on this work, PNNL designed and developed a prototype ledger based on transit matching data and workflows. This paper briefly describes the work performed to date and highlights the technical work performed to demonstrate DLT in a nuclear safeguards application. The paper outlines the nuclear safeguards problem used, the team’s reasoning for selecting the problem, and the team’s design choices. Lastly, this document introduces the resulting product, including screenshots of the demonstration, key findings, and recommendations for future research and deployment of the technology for safeguards purposes. [1] Frazar, Sarah, Mark Schanfein, Ken Jarman, Curtis West, Cliff Joslyn, Sam Winters, Sean Kreyling, and Amanda Sayre. 2017. “Exploratory study on potential safeguards applications for shared ledger technology,” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, February 2017. [2] Frazar, Sarah, Cliff Joslyn, R Singh, Amanda Sayre. 2018. “Evaluating Safeguards Use Cases for Blockchain Applications,” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, February 2018.