MPC&A Site Operations and Sustainability: A Policy Review

The U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear MAterial Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) program has been working since 1994 with 40 nuclear sites in Russia to upgrade the physical protection and material control and accounting of weapons usable nuclear material (highly enriched uranium and plutonium). The early focus of this program was on technical cooperation to design and install systems fo the purpose of rapidly upgrading MPC&A systems. This approach was viewed as the fastest way to improve the security of Russia's weapons usable nuclear material and the most mutually acceptable approach to MPC&A cooperation. Both counties were very successful in meeting this early goal of cooperation. By early 1998, the Program had met its initial commitments to install site wide upgrades to MPC&A systems at 11 small, civilian, reactor-type facilities in Russia. By the end of 1998, two larger civilian facilities had partial systems installed, securing the Central Storage Facility and Central Alarm Station at each site. in addtion to completing equipment installation, these sites received fundamental training in MPC&A principles, specific technical areas such as non-destructive assay measurements, and in the basic functioning of the newly installed equipment.