OPERATIONS MONITORING: EXPANDING THE ROLE OF SAFEGUARDS TECHNOLOGY

ABSTRACT

In recent years, safeguards authorities have come to depend on new technologies and techniques (e.g., remote data transmission, satellite technologies, and digital imagery) in their efforts to promote the regular exchange of accurate information about safeguards activities among parties to a given safeguards agreement. In addition to information sharing, Operational Monitoring through the use of advanced technologies can also serve as a mechanism to provide a measure of quality assurance for physical protection and material control activities. Anomalous events or unauthorized activities can be recorded and logged for later analysis and corrective action. 

In addition to meeting commitments derived from international safeguards agreements, there are new requirements for increased security. The events of the last two years have cast a new light on the perceived security of the world’s nuclear facilities and nuclear material. While concerns persist that some governments, i.e., North Korea, want to divert nuclear material from civil use to weapons programs, terrorist attacks in the U.S. and around the world have prompted new concerns of insider threats for nuclear sites. Safeguards authorities have come to depend on new technologies and techniques to counter these threats and to maintain their efforts in promoting operations monitoring of safeguards activities and facilitating the regular exchange of accurate information among parties to a given safeguards agreement. 

Two factors clearly contribute to the rise in technology use: (1) the degree of access required and permitted to all special nuclear material areas and (2) the prohibitive costs associated with physical inspections. In the past, the lack of technical capability to monitor and assure compliance with international nonproliferation agreements was a major obstacle to any treaty or agreement. This paper demonstrates that innovative use of technology provides a non-intrusive method of monitoring and facilitates the sharing of monitoring responsibilities. Specifically, it will illustrate how using advanced technologies in safeguards applications will significantly support and enhance physical protection and nuclear material control, while providing transparency and promoting mutual cooperation. 

INTRODUCTION

Speculation over a possible terrorist nuclear threat has mounted since November 2001, when the Times of London reported that Western intelligence officials believed al Qaeda had acquired nuclear materials. Since then, concern has escalated regarding the potential for terrorists to divert nuclear materials for use in a nuclear or radiological attack, resulting in widespread efforts to close security gaps at seaports, border crossings, and nuclear material storage sites worldwide. 

In response, Safeguards agencies and Governments are ramping up efforts to employ a variety of radiation detection devices at multiple checkpoints. For example, since 1998, U.S. Customs has provided more than 4,000 radiation pagers to its border inspectors and plans to deliver another 4,000 by September 2003.¹ According to the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), “Customs plans to install portal monitors at every U.S. border crossing and port of entry.”² As of October 2002, Customs had deployed over 200 radiation detectors on its X-ray systems for screening small packages. 

While the deployment of detectors is considered prescriptive for countering the nuclear threat, the widespread application of such technologies could create an operational/response management crisis particularly if the alarm data from these detectors is not centralized. For example, the GAO states that “[a]ccording to U.S. radiation detection vendors and DOE laboratory specialists, [radiation] pagers are more effectively used in conjunction with other radiation detection equipment, such as portal monitors.”³ Having multiple radiation detection devices perform interdiction functions at multiple locations creates a number of challenges, including the integration of systems and data, management of the information, as well as the coordination of response teams to simultaneous alarms at multiple checkpoints. 

For nearly ten years, the safeguards community has been working to centralize detection data in the context of remote monitoring⁴. In the following sections, we will discuss how networking detection equipment can provide a streamlined, yet flexible, solution to the evolving technology management challenges presented by the potential proliferation of radiological Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). As a case study, the authors point to a networking method that is presently being deployed with support from the U.S. Department of Energy to link data from various security system components such as portal monitors and surveillance cameras and securely transmit that data for centralized analysis and response coordination. This approach demonstrates how the centralization of detector data provides additional quality assurance measures for threat mitigation activities.