A Passive Tamper Indicating Enclosure For Use Within A Nuclear Weapons Monitoring Regime

AWE and PNNL are engaged in a technical collaboration investigating techniques to enhance continuity of knowledge over Treaty Accountable Items, with emphasis on a verified nuclear weapons dismantlement process. Tamper Indicating Enclosures (TIE) will likely be deployed as part of a chain of custody regime to indicate an unauthorised attempt to access a Treaty Accountable Item, or secure authenticated monitoring equipment. In 2011, the collaboration presented a paper at the INMM annual conference held in Palm Desert, CA titled “Passive Tamper Indicating Enclosures Incorporating Embedded Optical Fibre”, which discussed the concept of integrating optical fibres into TIEs for use as a passive tamper indicating mechanism. This paper provides an update on the Fibre Optic based TIE and introduces a second passive TIE concept based on the use of Poly(Methyl MethAcrylate) (PMMA). Concepts relating to deployment, tamper indication, and unique identification will be discussed.