Executive Summary and Highlights: Los Alamos National Laboratory

The nuclear materials safeguards research and development(R&D) program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)began in December 1966 under the leadership of G. Robert(Bob) Keepin. Over the intervening forty years, the program grewfrom a single group with a handful of staff to four groups withmore than 200 members and has been recognized as one of thepremier safeguards research and development programs in theworld.In July 2007, the laboratory hosted a two-day symposium onthe status of international safeguards. The symposium was sponsoredby New Mexico Institute for Advanced Studies, and LANL’sNuclear Nonproliferation Program and Division. Approximately140 participants gathered to celebrate the past accomplishmentsof the safeguards program, discuss current safeguards challenges,and look to the future of nuclear materials safeguards.The director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr.Michael Anastasio, opened the symposium. He was followed byDr. Siegfried Hecker, LANL director emeritus. Other speakersincluded Ollie Heinonen and Jacques Baute from theInternational Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Roland Schenkel, director-general of the Joint Research Centre of EURATOM, and representativesfrom the Australian Safeguards and NonproliferationOffice, Brookhaven, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia NationalLaboratories, and various offices of the U.S. Departments ofEnergy, State, and Defense.The most difficult challenge for those determined to acquirenuclear weapons is the acquisition of suitable nuclear materials.The term “nuclear materials safeguards” is used here to include allof the technologies, procedures, methods, and policies that, takentogether, help to reduce the risk that uncontrolled nuclear materialswill contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons bynations or by subnational groups (terrorists).The Los Alamos safeguards program has made seminal contributionsto the responsible management and protection ofnuclear materials in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)nuclear weapons complex, to international safeguards, and tosecuring nuclear materials in Russia and other states of the formerSoviet Union at the end of the Cold War. A key theme of the symposium,sometimes discussed explicitly, but always implicit, isthat the safeguards systems must adapt to deal with an ever-evolvingnuclear threat.This executive summary, symposium highlights, and the followingeight papers in this issue of the Journal of Nuclear MaterialsManagement present a condensed overview of the presentationsand discussions during the symposium. The papers that followtouch on safeguards history, challenges of expansion of nuclearenergy, and possible responses through strengthening safeguards,science and technology, and education and training. These selectionof papers start with the opening remarks by the Director ofLos Alamos National Laboratory and close with the paper fromRoland Schenkel, the final speaker of symposium from EuropeanCommission Joint Research Centre. Jim Sprinkle and Doug Reillyserved as LANL technical editors for these papers.