PHYSICAL PROTECTION POLICY & IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES: NEED FOR TIMELY EXPERT INPUT

The \"Report to the Secretary on the Status of the Department of Energy Safeguards and Security Program, October 1997\", by the Director of the DOE Office of Security Affairs (Joseph S. Mahaley), discusses general practical problems concerning safeguards and security policy and implementation. It emphasizes primary ways in which faulty (disjointed) organizational structure and competing internal interests have severely obstructed attainment of adequate safeguards and security at DOE nuclear facilities. The report asserts that the most fundamental problem is the \"need to revamp and correct the Department’s current fragmented and dysfunctional security management structure\". This paper, while accepting the diagnosis contained in the above 1997 Office of Security Affairs Report, recognizes that important structural management corrections could be slow. Therefore, this paper stresses the importance of timely expert input by individuals and by groups composed of individuals from different facilities. For example, by late 1994 (at an INMM workshop on physical protection) experts stated that it seemed too late to provide input that would prevent elimination of the DOE color-coded physical protection feature of access control badges. Timely expert input might have prevented that security loss and the costs of later correction. Control over site visitors is a continuing issue. A specific visitor-control issue is establishment of commercial operations within high-security areas, with access granted to uncleared and foreign national visitors and workers. Concerned security experts need to provide appropriate timely input!