Open Source Information Analysis in Support to Non-Proliferation

Open source information, here defined as "publicly available information that anyone can lawfully obtain by request, purchase, or observation" is playing an increasing role in treaty monitoring, compliance verification and control. The increasing availability of data from a growing number of sources on a vast range of topics has the potential to provide cues about complex programmes subject to international treaties such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). This report suggests a system’s thinking view of open source analysis in support to nonproliferation analysis, identifying the possible dimensions (hard/soft/context) involved and discussing different types of scenarios an open source analyst might face. Modelling a nuclear engineering programme by explicitly acknowledging the peculiarities of its hard and soft layers allows the analyst to consider which are the types of insights that each layer can provide and which is the the best tool/technique to investigate them. Once a particular analysis is set, the analyst might face different types of analysis scenarios, according to the type of the problem to be tackled and the type of data at his disposal. An open source analyst in support of non-proliferation will also have to handle many different forms of uncertainties, whose proper understanding is critical for the analyst to perform dependable assessments and for the decision maker to take properly informed decisions. A system’s thinking approach to open source analysis has the potential to integrate synergically with the other tools available in the international treaty monitoring toolkit, helping in increasing the international community’s confidence in its ability to detect an undeclared proliferation programme.JRC.G.II.7-Nuclear securit

The potential of open source information in supporting Acquisition Pathway Analysis to design IAEA State Level Approaches

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards designed to deter nuclear proliferation are constantly evolving to respond to new challenges. Within its State Level Concept, the IAEA envisions an objective-based and information-driven approach for designing and implementing State Level Approaches (SLAs), using all available measures to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of safeguards. The main Objectives of a SLA are a) to detect undeclared nuclear material or activities in the State, b) to detect undeclared production or processing of nuclear materials in declared facilities or locations outside facilities (LOFs), c) to detect diversion of declared nuclear material in declared facilities or LOFs. Under the SLA, States will be differentiated based upon objective State-Specific Factors that influence the design, planning, conduct and evaluation of safeguards activities. Proposed categories of factors include both technical and legal aspects, spanning from the deployed fuel cycle and the related state's technical capability to the type of safeguards agreements in force and the IAEA experience in implementing safeguards in that state. To design a SLA, the IAEA foresees the use of Acquisition Path Analysis (APA) to identify the plausible routes for acquiring weapons-usable material and to assess their safeguards significance. In order to achieve this goal, APA will have to identify possible acquisition paths, characterize them and eventually prioritise them. This paper will provide an overview of how the use of open source information (here loosely defined as any type of non-classified or proprietary information and including, but not limited to, media sources, government and non-governmental reports and analyses, commercial data, satellite imagery, scientific/technical literature, trade data) can support this activity in the various aspects of a typical APA approach.JRC.E.8-Nuclear securit

Proliferation Resistance Characteristics for Civilian Nuclear Fuel Cycles Assessments

Rather than attempting a comprehensive overview of all previous studies, this paper aims at presenting a representative sample of previous approaches; a criteria adopted for the identification of the studies to be considered has been that of selecting only studies available in open literature. This paper will briefly review in a critical way some of the past studies carried out in this field, concentrating on the identified sets of characteristics and metrics to be used to characterise the proliferation resistance of Nuclear Energy Systems. The matter is also relevant to the PR&PP expert group initiative to which JRC collaborates.JRC.G.8-Nuclear safeguard

On the Use of Non-coherent Fault Trees in Safety and Security Studies

Non coherent fault trees characterised by non monotonic structure functions allows easier modelling of complex top events. The availability of tools based on the Binary Decision Diagrams approach allows extending the fault tree analysis to applications requiring the construction of non coherent functions as well high basic events probabilities. Two examples are described in this paper. The first one, from the field of safety, shows that the possibility to use non coherent trees reduces the modelling effort for complex Top events. The second example refers to a simple problem in the new field of security where the need of dealing with intentional actions implies the modelling of mutually exclusive events to which high probability values are associated. Some considerations about the interpretation of the importance indexes of basic events are also briefly described.JRC.G.8-Nuclear safeguard

The Collaborative Project on the European Sodium Fast Reactor and its Proliferation Resistance Evaluation

The Collaborative Project on the European Sodium Fast Reactor (CP-ESFR) is an international project where 26 European partners develop R&D solutions for a European Sodium Fast Reactors concept. The Project is funded by the 7th EU Framework programme and cover topics such that the fuel, the fuel element and the fuel cycle, the safety concepts, the reactors architecture and the components and the balance of plants. Within the Subproject 3, dedicated to the safety concepts and to proliferation resistance and physical protection issues, a dedicated task addresses proliferation resistance issues. The paper recalls firstly the scope and objective of the CP-ESFR project and illustrates briefly its structure. The main core features and the so called working horses, for a loop and a pool Sodium fast reactor concept are presented, by highlighting the features more relevant for the proliferation resistance aspects. The activities carried out in the project for its proliferation resistance evaluation are then illustrated: these involved mainly material type consideration on the possible diversion targets, safeguards by design and safeguardability considerations.JRC.E.8-Nuclear securit

A Safeguardability Check-List for Safeguards by Design

Safeguards by design is a complex step-by-step interactive decision process involving various stake-holders and design choices to be made over a certain period of time. The resulting plant design should be a compromise among economical, safety, security and safeguards implementation constraints. Access to technology and equipment, as well as to the nuclear fuel cycle, determines the basic choices that the designer has to make. Once the boundary conditions for a given facility have been fixed, the designer still faces the challenge of setting several design and operational parameters that will require various trade-offs . Concerning safeguards, these can be seen in three groups, i.e. those related to the general design and its intrinsic proliferation resistance; those related to the specific lay-out and planning; those related to the actual safeguards instrumentation, its effectiveness and efficiency.JRC.E.8-Nuclear securit

Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection Robustness Characteristics of Innovative and Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems

Since the early nineteen seventies, a lot of effort has been put into trying to define and evaluate the proliferation resistance of nuclear energy systems and their associated nuclear fuel cycles. Past studies put in evidence how it was not possible to conceive a proliferation-free nuclear fuel cycle (hence the need of a suitable safeguards system), but also stressed that not all of the available options are equivalent. The topic has become of renewed interest, in the context of the innovative reactor and nuclear energy systems design concepts presently under development. New reactors will have to exhibit and demonstrate enhanced features with respect to the existing ones. It is common practice to classify Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection characteristics of a system as either intrinsic, i.e. belonging to the system, or extrinsic, such as those related to the application of international safeguards. This paper will summarise in a critical way some of the Proliferation Resistance & Physical Protection (PR&PP) intrinsic features that have emerged so far, in a number of studies and reports available in this field, and can contribute to provide a first input to designers to brainstorm on a number of possible requirements. This survey is part of a JRC activity contributing to the Generation IV International Forum (GIF).JRC.G.8-Nuclear safeguard

Proliferation Resistance and Material type considerations within the collaborative project for a European Sodium Fast Reactor

The collaborative project for a European Sodium Fast Reactor (CP-ESFR) is an international project where 25 European partners developed Research & Development solutions and concepts for a European sodium fast reactor. The project was funded by the 7th European Union Framework Programme and covered topics such as the reactor architectures and components, the fuel, the fuel element and the fuel cycle, and the safety concepts. Within sub-project 3, dedicated to safety, a task addressed proliferation resistance considerations. The Generation IV International Forum (GIF) Proliferation Resistance & Physical Protection (PR&PP) Evaluation Methodology has been selected as the general framework for this work, complemented by punctual aspects of the IAEA-INPRO Proliferation Resistance methodology and other literature studies - in particular for material type characterization. The activity has been carried out taking the GIF PR&PP Evaluation Methodology and its Addendum as the general guideline for identifying potential nuclear material diversion targets. The targets proliferation attractiveness has been analyzed in terms of the suitability of the targets’ nuclear material as the basis for its use in nuclear explosives. To this aim the PR&PP Fissile Material Type measure was supplemented by other literature studies, whose related metrics have been applied to the nuclear material items present in the considered core alternatives. This report will firstly summarize the main ESFR design aspects relevant for PR along the lines of the GIF PR&PP White Paper template. An analysis on proliferation targets is then discussed, with emphasis on their characterization from a nuclear material point of view. Finally, a high-level ESFR PR analysis according to the four main proliferation strategies identified by the GIF PR&PP Evaluation Methodology (concealed diversion, concealed misuse, breakout, clandestine production in clandestine facilities) is presented.JRC.E.8-Nuclear securit

On the Use of Non-Coherent Fault Trees in Safety and Security Studies

This paper gives some insights on the usefulness of non coherent fault trees in system modelling from both the point of view of safety and security. A safety related system can evolve from the working states to failed states through degraded states, i.e. working state, but in a degraded mode. In practical applications the degraded states may be of par-ticular interest due e.g. to the associated risk increase or the different types of consequent actions. The top events definitions of such states contain the working conditions of some subsystems/components. It is shown in this paper how the use of non coherent fault trees can greatly simplify both the model-ling and quantification of these states. Some considerations about the interpretation of the importance indexes of negated basic events are also briefly described. When dealing with security applications there is the need to cope not only with stochastic events, such as component failures and human errors, but also with deliberate intentional actions, which successes might be characterised by high probability values. Different mutually exclusive attack scenarios may be envisaged for a given system. Hence, the essential feature of a fault tree analyser is the capability to determine the exact value of the top event probability containing mutually exclusive events. It is shown that also in these cases the use of non coherent fault trees allows solving the problem with limited effort.JRC.G.8-Nuclear safeguard

Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection Robustness Characteristics of Innovative and Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems

Since the early seventies, a lot of effort has been put in trying to define/evaluate the proliferation resistance of nuclear energy systems and their associated nuclear fuel cycles. Past studies put in evidence how it wasn’t possible to conceive a proliferation-free nuclear fuel cycle (hence the need of a suitable safeguard system), but also stressed that not all the available options are equivalent. The topic has become of renewed interest in the context of the innovative reactor and nuclear energy systems design concepts, presently under development. New reactors will have to exhibit and demonstrate enhanced features with respect to the existing ones. It is common practice to classify Proliferation Resistance (PR) and Physical Protection (PP) characteristics of a system in intrinsic, i.e. belonging to the system, and extrinsic, such as those related to the application of international safeguards. This paper will summarise in a critical way some of the Proliferation Resistance & Physical Protection (PR&PP) intrinsic features as emerged so far in a number of studies and reports available in this field and can contribute to provide a first input to designers to brainstorm on a number of possible requirements. This survey is part of JRC activity in contribution to Generation IV International Forum (GIF).JRC.G.8-Nuclear safeguard