An Integrated Systems Approach to the Monitoring and Inspection for the US/Russian Agreement on Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium

The end of the Cold War has produced a large surplus of fissile material as a result of the dismantling of thousands of nuclear weapons. The HEU Purchase Agreement is helping to dispose of surplus highly-enriched uranium (HEU) from Russian nuclear weapons. The Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PuMDA) is intended to do the same for plutonium from US and Russian weapons. A long and complex disposition process is required, which will necessitate a Monitoring and Inspection (M&I) Regime to confirm that the Agreement objectives are being reached. This report details the work that Sandia, in conjunction with DOE/NNSA and an inter-lab working group, has accomplished to date in efforts to design a monitoring and inspection regime architecture for the PuMDA. A map of the disposition process was developed. In parallel, a detailed analysis of the agreement was performed identifying and prioritizing the monitoring and inspection objectives. Three levels of conceptual M&I regimes were developed and mapped to the objectives and process map. Technologies critical to implementation of the M&I elements were identified and documented. A computer simulation of the disposition process was developed that produced data analogs to those expected from the actual M&I process. A data management and knowledge generation structure was developed to show how data may be analyzed and presented to a monitor. This presentation will focus on the integrated systems approach for developing monitoring and inspection requirements and implementation options from the agreement text.