Using Vulnerability Assessments to Design Facility Safeguards and Security Systems

The Weapons Complex Reconfiguration (WCR) Program is meant to prepare the Department of Energy (DOE) weapons complex to meet the needs of the next century through construction of new facilities or upgrades-in-place at existing facilities. This paper describes how a vulnerability assessment (VA) was used to identify potential S&S features for the conceptual design for a plutonium storage facility as part of the WCR Program. We distinguish those features of the design that need to be investigated at the conceptual stage from those that can be evaluated later. We also examined what protection features may allow reduced S&S operating costs, with the main focus on protective force costs. While some of these concepts hold the promise for significantly reducing life-cycle protective force costs, their use depends on resolving long-standing tradeoffs between S&S and safety, which are discussed in the study.