SOCIETAL RISK APPROACH TO SAFEGUARDS DESIGN AND EVALUATION

A comprehensive rationale for safeguards design and evaluation, and a framework for continuing systematic assessment of the system's effectiveness and efficient allocation of available safeguards resources so as to provide a balanced protection has been developed. The general objective of safeguards has been stated as: \"to achieve a level of protection against ... [willful actions involving the possession of nuclear materials or the sabotage of nuclear facilities] that insures against a significant increase in the overall risk of death, injury, or property damage to the public from other causes beyond the control of the individual.\" Consistent with this objective, the societal risk approach was chosen as the basis for designing and evaluating the safeguards system. The approach considers the frequency (or likelihood) of occurrence of an anti-social act involving nuclear materials or facilities and the magnitude of the effects on society should such an act be successfully perpetrated. The analysis starts with the identification of the set of illegitimate final acts, or \"events\", which involve nuclear materials or nuclear facilities. These events are used as a basis for identifying the adversary action sequences that could produce the final events, and as a basis for considering the consequences to the public. The paper presents a summary of the societal risk approach, considerations relating to frequency of attempt, an adversary action tree approach to analysis of adversary activities, the structure of the safeguards system implied by the adversary actions, and implications relating to safeguards system design and evaluation arising from the societal risk approach.