Year
2002
Abstract
Due to the multidimensional and complex nature of nuclear proliferation, many proliferation risk assessment studies have relied on expert judgment and multi-attribute utility analysis to quantify and qualify proliferation concerns. This approach utilizes groups of experts focused on lists of attributes of proliferation to determine proliferation potential. Because of the cost and inflexibility of such an approach, few scenarios that might cause proliferation potential have actually been realized. To address these issues Sandia National Laboratories is developing a quantitative risk-based method for examining potential nuclear proliferation pathways that is more repeatable and easier to perform than previous methods. In addition, the Sandia approach reuses information from previous analyses. The Risk Informed Proliferation Analysis (RIPA) methodology still utilizes expert judgment as well as quantifiable characteristics that result from engineering analysis. However, it poses issues to the experts in a more bounded and limited form. This enables experts to assess individual issues more thoroughly than was previously possible. Since expert judgment is gathered for specific activities rather than entire proliferation pathways, it can be reused for multiple analyses without reconvening the experts, thus ensuring consistency among analyses. An automated algorithm combines the expert responses with the quantifiable characteristics to develop a large number of potential scenarios from which global proliferation insights can be gleaned.