First 50 years: A review of the Department of Energy domestic safeguards and security program

摘要

World War II not only brought the United States rapidly into the nuclear age, but it also brought a new term, (open quotes)safeguards.(close quotes) By that time, physical security was an already established activity that dealt with the protection of possessions such as property, vehicles, and other valuables. A secret nuclear project under a stadium at the University of Chicago would add a new dimension to physical security. Similarly, a community known only by its post office box at a location 27 miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico (PO Box 1663) would initiate new programs to protect information and technology while their programs changed the science and warfare around the world. The Manhattan Project and what was to become the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (now Los Alamos National Laboratory) would extend the applications of physical security and, soon to be implemented, safeguards to produce important technical advances for the protection, accounting, control, and nonproliferation of fissile nuclear materials. Security for nuclear materials and weapons information began as a foremost consideration with the start of the nuclear programs in the early 1940s. In the 1960s, the Atoms for Peace Program promoted the peaceful use of nuclear energy and made the US a supplier of nuclear materials and peaceful-use nuclear technology to other states. This program also changed the focus on nuclear materials from that of worldwide control to inspection by an independent agency, the proposed International Atomic Energy Agency. At this same time the nuclear weapons states increased from three to five. Other nations worked to obtain a nuclear weapons capability, resulting in increasing concerns about nuclear proliferation.