Organization, Control and Development of the NM Physical Protection System at the VNIINM nuclear-hazard facility named for A.A. Bochvar

The All-Russian Scientific-Research Institute for Inorganic Materials named for Academician A.A. Bochvar, subordinate to the Russian Federation’s “RosAtom” government corporation is charged with conducting research on Category I levels of nuclear materials. The categorization of the nuclear materials at Bochvar is defined by the “Regulations for the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials, Nuclear Facilities and Nuclear Storage Sites” (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations). In accordance with Regulations and other standard documents which regulate physical protection at such sites, security at the institute is provided by the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (MVD) and the internal security service (SB) of the facility. The MVD is responsible for the security and defense of the Institute and the SB is responsible for issues concerning access to nuclear materials as well as control over the transfer of nuclear materials. Since 1998, the Institute has been working jointly with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Material Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) program to upgrade the nuclear material physical protection system at the site. A great amount of work has been accomplished during this period, including improvements to the control of the materials at the site through significantly enhanced physical protection and MVD capacity.