Integrated Safeguards and Security for Reprocessing Plant Monitoring

Nuclear fuel reprocessing plants contain a wealth of plant monitoring data including material measurements, process monitoring, administrative procedures, and physical protection elements. Future facilities are moving in the direction of highly-integrated plant monitoring systems that make efficient use of the plant data to improve monitoring and reduce costs. The Separations and Safeguards Performance Model (SSPM) is an analysis tool that is used for modeling advanced monitoring systems and to determine system response under diversion scenarios. The utility of integrating process monitoring and material measurement data has been previously demonstrated with the SSPM. This work extends previous efforts by integrating the facility’s physical protection system (PPS) and administrative procedures into the current model. The PPS at the hypothetical facility is modeled using the Adversary Time-Line Analysis System (ATLAS) software to determine detection probability and delay times for material loss pathways. The adversary is assumed to be a non-violent insider. A human reliability-based insider theft methodology is used to generate time-dependent detection probabilities for a sample administrative procedure. Alarms from an administrative procedure, as well as process monitoring or material balance alarms, place the facility in a state of alert, which increases detection probability for many elements in the PPS. The goal of this integration is to show that material balance and administrative procedure data can improve the performance of the PPS and thus the timeliness of detection. Model results support this goal, indicating that system integration has the potential to decrease detection time for both abrupt and protracted diversion.