Basic principles of development of requirements to instruments used to prevent illicit transportation of nuclear and radioactive materials at borders.

The threat of illicit proliferation of radioactive nuclear materials and attempts to use them for terrorist purposes has resulted in expansion of the radiation control field and creation of its new types. In particular, it concerns customs (border) radiation control. This control has required the development and production of equipment ranging from stationary monitors installed on international borders to very small, highly sensitive search instruments. Concurrently, various international agencies have worked on the creation of standards, recommendation, techniques, test programs, etc. to form the requirements which this new equipment should meet. One of the first documents of this type was the final report of the ITRAP Program [1], and successive recommendations have been those of the IAEA [2, 3], the Russian Standards [4], and the American Standards [5-7]. These recommendations have been used as the performance requirements of equipment that has been purchased and installed on the borders of various states. However, analysis of these standards and recommendations reveal contradictions in both performance requirements and radiation control procedures using the equipment. These contradictions often degrade the efficiency of the equipment, either resulting in a failure to detect hazardous sources or increasing the false or so-called innocent alarm rate, and thus creating significant problems for the users of the equipment. Further, these different requirements may cause problems along the borders of adjacent states where one may detect a radioactive source but the other may not. These contradictions, their reasons, and the possible solutions are considered in this paper.