Year
1996
Abstract
Remote monitoring provides a more timely and comprehensive way to meet national and international requirements for monitoring nuclear material inventories. Unattended monitoring technologies could be used to meet national needs for nuclear material safety, protection, control and accountability. Unattended systems possessing a remote data transmission capability could be used to meet international requirements for nuclear material safeguards and transparency. Even though more enhancements are required to improve system reliability, remote monitoring’s future potential seems great. The key questions are: – how will remote monitoring systems be used (configuration and operation); – how effective will the system be (vs. current activities); and – how much will it cost. This paper provides preliminary answers to these questions based on the experience gained from a joint IAEA-United States Support Program (USSP) task to evaluate remote monitoring at the Oak Ridge HEU Storage vault.* This paper also draws on experience gained from U.S. involvement in other remote monitoring projeets.z