FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR MPC&A VERIFICATION

The end of the cold war has had a dramatic impact on Material Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) for weapons usable nuclear materials both domestically and internationally. In the United States, resources for Department of Energy (DOE) facility operations, including MPC&A functions, are shrinking; facilities are being shutdown or are transitioning to new missions; nuclear weapons are being dismantled, and nuclear materials are being placed in long term storage, with programs in various stages of development for disposition of the excess plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU). Internationally, more countries are signatories to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) full scope safeguards agreements, budgetary constraints impact both the IAEA and the participating states, and efforts are underway to increase the efficiency of IAEA safeguards without loss of effectiveness. In addition, President Clinton has ordered that 200 metric tons of fissile material be withdrawn from the U.S. nuclear stockpile and has offered to submit these excess fissile materials for IAEA inspection, and President Yeltsin has proposed to place about 40 percent of Russia’s stocks of weapons grade plutonium to be stored in the storage facility being built at Mayak with U.S. assistance under IAEA control. In order for state and international agencies to achieve safeguards and nonproliferation objectives within this framework and to expand coverage to the huge quantities of weapons-usable fissile materials from the nuclear weapons states, new approaches to establishing safeguards systems are necessary. Two techniques being considered for enhancing safeguards regimes include environmental and remote monitoring, and these are the subject of a number of talks at this meeting. This paper will focus on a variety of advanced concepts to achieve a material oriented approach to remote monitoring.