THE TOTALLY AUTOMATED NUCLEAR MATERIALS ACCOUNTABILITY FUNCTION AT MRC-MOUND

The earliest applications of automated data processing (ADP) were in the field of accounting and were quite readily accepted as applied to finance. Yet these same techniques were not readily applied to the \"accounting\" of nuclear materials. It may have been that managers in charge of this highly responsible function were reluctant to turn it over to a machine and waited for the machine to prove itself worthy of their trust. On the other hand, it may have been that those most familiar with the machines, being generally of an accounting or financial background, tended to monopolize the resources and were not prone to encourage new applications of the systems. Both factors were probably at work. In any case, of course, as hardware and software improved, more and more functions, including nuclear material accounting, were able to be performed by ADP.