Year
2012
Abstract
The physical protection of nuclear material (NM) during transportation is one of the most complicated and demanding tasks. The paper briefly overviews the key problems underlying the task and the results achieved as of today. State Corporation “Rosatom” has developed and is successfully applying methods and special software to assess the effectiveness of nuclear material physical protection used during the transport of NM. These methods have been reflected in special agency regulations that the State Enterprise “Eleron” (Rosatom) has developed and in the special software “Polygon” intended for simulation of adversary actions against a rail transport or vehicular convoy with NM. “Polygon” was implemented at the Ministry of Internal Affairs - Internal Troops (MVD-IT) Training Centers “Lunevo” and “Gorelovo” as a training simulator, and at 11 MVD-IT transportation units as an analytical tool during special cargo transportation. The project was performed under the U.S. - Russian Material Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) Program. Participation of effectiveness assessment experts during a training course on Transportation Security (Albuquerque, June 2011) facilitated the upgrade of the Polygon program’s code. The paper shows that a combination of force-on-force exercises and simulation tools help to enhance the protection of transported material and to justify new organizational measures, physical barriers and security equipment for better physical protection. The paper analyzes the results of performed work, and outlines planned use of and upgrades to the program. This paper presents