Outlooks of Further Development and Upgrades Trends of Physical Protection Systems at LUCH

The paper describes the basic activities on physical protection systems upgrades performed at LUCH within a period of joint cooperation under the Russian-American agreement. Due to the huge positive experience gained in the period of the cooperation, the experts of LUCH managed to carry out qualitative analysis of the installed systems and also schedule their further activities in providing physical protection of nuclear materials. The paper covers the basic aspects of physical protection, such as support of the whole hardware complex efficiency, carrying out of further upgrades, and implementation of institutional arrangements in providing the nuclear materials safety and the systems efficiency. The positive results of the joint cooperation are noted in the conclusions as well as acknowledgement to the experts of the national laboratories, the U.S. Department of Energy and Rosatom for their assistance in establishment and development of the physical protection systems at LUCH. The objective necessity in planning the further physical protection systems development is connected with many factors, including reaching an end of the equipment operational service life. Timely and regular preventive maintenance of the equipment allows the service life to be extended but not indefinitely. It results in a need for new approaches and design decisions for using more modern equipment. Furthermore, the same strategy is required for equipping new facilities with physical protection systems. Significant developments in network and computer technologies allows for creating and applying systems of data collection, communication, and video surveillance systems with an increase in the signals processing speed and reliability of the system operation as a whole. Changes in current regulatory documents and introduction of new regulatory documents require enterprises to implement additional upgrades and make the institutional arrangements for their completion. The important elements of further development and perfection of the physical protection systems are the personnel motivation and training, both to the new normative and the methodological base, and implementation of new technical systems at the same time.