Year
2005
Abstract
Over the last three years, the All-Russian Research Institutes of Automatics (VNIIA) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) have developed advanced nuclear warhead (NW) container remote monitoring and inventory technologies for improving safety, security, and monitoring operations at Rosatom Russian Ministry of Defense (RF MoD) facilities. These technologies have been integrated into the Automated Monitoring and Inventory System (AMIS) for a storage application. Technologies developed at VNIIA include the following functions: ?? Identification of container’s content ?? Container monitoring ?? Radiation monitoring ?? Video surveillance ?? Inventory of material or warhead containers ?? Tamper indication devices ?? Remote monitoring ?? Bar-code applications ?? Tracking technologies These technologies were successfully tested at the Sandia-supported VNIIA Demonstration Facility in Moscow, Russia last year and subsequently, have been shipped to the RF MOD Technical Systems Safety and Security Research & Development (R&D) Center (NITs BTS) in St. Petersburg, Russia for their operational testing. That testing started in November 2004 and will be completed in June 2005. To ensure application of these technologies throughout the NW lifecycle, VNIIA has expanded its R&D efforts for AMIS and associated technologies to focus on the transportation phase. Their major tasks for this year were to modify the AMIS system designed for storage monitoring and inventory to a configuration that will support those same functions during movement of NW containers either by railcar or truck, and then test the AMIS system in the associated transportation configurations. Additionally, tracking technologies will be investigated and evaluated for potential integration into the overall AMIS system. This paper describes the technical characteristics of the AMIS system and its components, and reviews the current R&D efforts, as well as the future development plans that include cooperation with the RF MoD.