Evaluation of MC&A Effectiveness and Its Contribution to the Safeguarding Of Nuclear Material with Assurance Assessments

Safeguards and Security within the DOE complex has struggled with integrating MC&A and Physical Security together in a single model. Attempts were made to incorporate MC&A elements that provide detection into vulnerability assessments. While this approach has met with some success, it does not fully address the different contributions that each make to nuclear material protection. Protection measures that rely on the lack of alarms to imply all nuclear material is still present, in the correct location, and intended use are limited due to their passive nature. A highly effective system may provide confidence that all nuclear material is still present, but it does not provide assurance that it is there. MC&A, through active measures that confirm or verify the actual presence of nuclear material, provides assurance that all of the nuclear material is controlled and accounted for. This paper presents a model that combines the detection and assessment functions from vulnerability assessments with assurance activities provided by MC&A to provide an integrated model that can be used for evaluation of current systems, evaluation of system changes, and monitoring assurance in real time based upon operational activities.