Technical Analysis Supporting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Development of a New Approach to Material Attractiveness

摘要

As part of a fuel cycle security rule-making effort, the Nuclear RegulatoryCommission (NRC) is developing an approach to take into account the attractiveness ofspecial nuclear material (SNM) in assigning physical protection requirements. A major partof the technical analysis supporting this activity is a project being conducted at Los AlamosNational Laboratory (LANL). The purpose of the study was to develop a model that wouldassist the NRC in understanding what an adversary could actually do with special nuclearmaterial (SNM) in a wide variety of chemical and physical forms. LANL developed a logicmodel that has three primary modules. The first module is associated with materialacquisition. It analyzes 32 scenarios at generic facilities for each form of the SNM to beanalyzed. A large number of adversary types/groups are considered. It provides an estimateof the likelihood that the adversary will be successful in acquiring the SNM. Next, there is amodule for chemical and metallurgical processing. It identifies the chemical andmetallurgical steps required to process the acquired SNM into a weapons-usable form. Thismodule takes into account the complexity, time to process, and cost of processing. A separateanalysis is conducted for each adversary type/group to provide a likelihood of successfulprocessing. The third module addresses the weaponization of the material. For each of theadversary types/groups and material forms, it provides an estimate of the likelihood that theadversary could obtain a yield from the material. Using this model, NRC staff will be able toconsider alternative security measures, and in turn, determine the physical protection thatwould be required for the various physical and chemical forms of SNM. The model isdesigned to capture our current understanding, but can be modified to address future concernsor processes. Physical protection measures will be established to provide some margins forchanges that may occur in the future.