Year
2001
Abstract
In the last decade, there has been a large increase in the use of Containment and Surveillance (C/S) systems such as video surveillance, radiation monitoring and seals in order to safeguard nuclear materials. Within the context of a co-operation between the « Institut de Protection et de Sûreté Nucléaire » (IPSN) and the Russian Research Center of Kurchatov Institute (RRC/KI), an agreement has been reached concerning research and development regarding the control and accountability of nuclear material. One of this recent development to strengthen international safeguards was to use new techniques in the field of unattended containment and surveillance systems with the capability of remote monitoring of authenticated data from the facility to the inspectorate headquarter. It was the beginning of joint work of the specialists from IPSN and RRC/KI on developing and testing of remote monitoring systems to enhance the control of nuclear material in Russia. The objective of the task is to develop a remote monitoring system of a nuclear material storage located in the Kurchatov Institute, in order to control and detect authorized and non-authorized movement of nuclear material. The system architecture is based on field network commercially available technology and was demonstrated on one of the sites of RRC/KI, with the providing of a remote monitoring systems on nuclear materials to the RRC/KI services responsible for the storage and use of nuclear materials. In this joint effort, RRC/KI and IPSN share several common objectives: acquiring experience in processing and realisation of remote monitoring projects for control and non-proliferation of nuclear materials, learning the newest technologies of data acquisition and processing of experimental information and demonstrating of international co-operation in the field of non-proliferation and control of nuclear materials. The paper focuses on technical issues of the remote monitoring system and on the description on the existing installed system.