Safeguards Against Nuclear Terrorism: HEU vs Plutonium

摘要

importance of which our calculations show formally and explicitly through the prominence of the quantities dp_u/dc_u and dp_p/dc_p in concluding results. What has already been spent is important only in that prior efforts have brought us to a status quo, hopefully with a few lessons learned. The absence of the absolute cost of safeguards and stockpile elimination from our criteria for optimal operation, however, renders clear that as future strategies go, threat reduction per dollar is the relevant quantity, whereas for example a weighing of accumulated cost of safeguards versus estimated cost of an attack is not. Roughly speaking, as long as one dollar invested in a safeguards branch lowers the nuclear terrorism threat by more than one dollar equivalent, safeguards spending should be increased for that branch.