Year
1986
Abstract
Protecting nuclear materials is a challenging problem for facility managers. To counter the broad spectrum of potential threats, facility managers rely on diverse safeguards measures, including elements of physical protection, material control and accountability, and human reliability programs. Deciding how to upgrade safeguards systems involves difficult tradeoffs between increased protection and the costs and operational impact of protection measures. Effective allocation of safeguards and security resources requires a prioritization of system upgrades based on a relative measure of upgrade benefits to upgrade costs. Analytical tools are needed to help safeguards managers measure the relative benefits and costs and allocate their limited resources to achieve balanced, cost-effective protection against the full spectrum of threats. This paper presents a conceptual approach and quantitative model that have been developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to aid safeguards managers. The model is in the preliminary stages of implementation, and an effort is ongoing to make the approach and quantitative model available for general use. The model, which is designed to complement existing nuclear safeguards evaluation tools, incorporates a variety of factors and integrates information on the likelihood of potential threats, safeguards capabilities to defeat threats, and the relative consequences if safeguards fail. The model uses this information to provide an overall measure for comparing safeguards upgrade projects at a facility.