Incorporation of an Item/Material Attribute System into PAMTRAK

The Department of Energy (DOE) mission is changing due to the number of nuclear weapon reductions by the United States and the former Soviet Union with long-term storage requirements for DOE sites increasing. New technology to ensure the integrity of special nuclear material (SNM) in storage is available to sites to supplement manual physical inventories. This allows them to decrease operating costs while keeping radiation exposure at minimal levels.1 We have developed a generic, real time, personnel tracking and material monitoring system named PAMTRAK. Such a system can significantly reduce the number of required, manual physical inventories at DOE sites while increasing assurance that an insider has not diverted or stolen material. Until recently PAMTRAK used only material monitoring devices that provided location/ containment attributes. However, Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Metrox, Inc. have recently developed hard-wired item/material attribute systems that monitor both temperature and weight. We have incorporated both of these systems into PAMTRAK. If a site employed one of these item/material attribute systems, it could decrease its manual inventory frequency to three years. This paper describes how a site might implement such a system to meet the DOE's requirements.