Sandia Laboratories' Plutonium Protection System Project

The Plutonium Protection System (PPS) is an integrated safeguards system developed by Sandia Laboratories for the Department of Energy's Office of Safeguards and Security. This safeguards development project had as its overall goal the design and construction, for evaluation, of a prototype plutonium storage system that would combine the concepts of barriers, intrusion alarms, security, operational control, and material control and accountability. The combined " utilization of these concepts would provide positive, uninterrupted control of plutonium items. This control would begin at the time the plutonium item is received at the storage facility, continue through its storage life, and terminate with the authorized release of the item from storage. While at the storage facility, the item would be protected in such a way that any attempt to steal, divert, or sabotage material would be readily detected and alarms would be generated. Sandia Laboratories first reported a description and status of the PPS project to INMM during the 1977 Annual Meeting. Operations (RHO) has completed test and evaluation of the prototype system. RHO, as their part of the test and evaluation, performed an operational demonstration at their facility in Hanford, Washington. Sandia performed additional evaluation using the PPS at Hanford as well as the development PPS installed in the Sandia Systems Integration Laboratory (SIL) in Albuquerque. This article provides a review of the operational features of the system, describes the overall test and evaluation activities, and summarizes the more significant results. 1 Both Sandia and Rockwell Hanford