REVISING THE RULES FOR MATERIAL PROTECTION, CONTROL AND ACCOUNTING

摘要

As talk of a "nuclear renaissance" reaches a fever pitch, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the regulations governing the security of commercial nuclear materials in the United States will need to be significantly revised in the event of a nuclear expansion. There are many reasons for this. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's regulations for facilities possessing special nuclear materials have not evolved rapidly enough to keep pace with the increasing severity of terrorist threats. It is not clear if current regulations would be workable and effective if there were a large increase in the production, storage, processing and transportation of materials usable in nuclear or radiological weapons. Some proposals being discussed in the context of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership may require licensing novel facilities and materials that are not specifically addressed by current regulations. Also, inconsistencies between the levels of protection provided by NRC and DOE rules for the same types of materials will have to be resolved. This paper will describe what a new rule for the protection, control and accounting of weapon-usable materials would need to look like in order to provide sufficient assurance that nuclear facilities can be secured and safeguarded in the coming decades.