A New Seal Verifier

Safeguards seals are tamper-indicating devices used to secure materials, documents, data lines or any other important items in tamper-indicating enclosures. In addition, seals provide a means of uniquely identifying, or authenticating, the secured containers. Seal verification procedures consist of carefully examining the enclosure, and the seal for any sign of tampering. Depending on the application, several seal types are currently in use by safeguards authorities. When a fiber optic loop is used as part of the sealing scheme, exposing one end of the “seal fiber optic loop” to light creates a unique pattern at the other end. These patterns are photographed and stored for future comparisons. The uniqueness of the light pattern provides a strong authentication or identification for the sealed containers. While the various safeguards seals will be in use for years to come, the present methods of verifying them have room for improvement and could be made more convenient for the inspector. In this paper, we will describe a new verifier concept that enables easy in-situ verification of a number of different seals. The technology is being developed collaboratively between industry and the IAEA and uses a highly efficient and streamlined approach that takes advantage of devices with significant computing power and toolkits that are available commercially off-the-shelf.