NUCLEAR MATERIALS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM AT THE NNSS

The Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), formerly the Nevada Test Site, was established in 1951 mainly for weapons testing; because special nuclear materials (SNM) were expended during the tests, a nuclear material management program was not required. That changed in December 2004 with the receipt of Category I SNM for purposes other than weapons testing. At that time, Material Control and Accountability and Nuclear Material Management were a joint laboratory (Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore) effort with nuclear material management being performed at the laboratories. That changed in March 2006 when the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office appointed sole responsibility to the Management and Operations (M&O) contractor, National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec). Since 2006 the basic nuclear material management work was completed by a combination of M&O employees and subcontractors, but a true Nuclear Material Management (NMM) Program was not determined to be necessary until recently. With expanding missions and more nuclear material (NM) coming to the NNSS, it became imperative to have an organization to manage these materials; therefore, an NMM Manager was officially appointed by NSTec in 2012. In June 2011 a Gap Analysis and white paper was completed by a subcontractor; this presentation will include highlights from those documents along with our plans to resolve the “gaps” and stand up a functional and compliant NMM Program at the NNSS.