The History of Safeguards Technology Training’s Use of Nuclear Materials

Since the beginning of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Safeguards Technology Training in 1973 the hands-on laboratory portions of the courses have consistently been identified as the most useful aspect of the course on student completed course surveys. The importance of nuclear materials and in particular special nuclear material to safeguards technology training can not be understated. In order to effectively teach students how to use technology to safeguard special nuclear materials, the nuclear decay signatures and the interaction of those signatures with different nondestructive assay techniques need to be studied in a hands-on laboratory setting. The quantity, number of items, and variability of items measured in the laboratory portion of the safeguards technology courses has consistently decreased with time. The structure and instructional details have been modified over time to minimize the negative impact to educational goals. The history of these decreases, broad instructional impacts, and details of mitigating those impacts will be discussed in this paper. The impact of further reduction and increased impediments to the use of nuclear material will also be addressed.