Prioritization of Emerging Technologies as Impacting the Field of International Nuclear Safeguards.

Abstract

Rapid technological advancement is bringing profound changes to many industries and will cause significant effects on the domain of international nuclear safeguards. Nuclear operators and safeguards stakeholders are already investing significant resources to address some of these new emerging opportunities and challenges. However, most of these efforts are done ad hoc, in many cases driven by intuitive perception of certain technologies. Systematic understanding of this massive technological evolution is of vital importance to identify both vulnerabilities and opportunities to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of safeguards, as well as to prioritize investment areas towards the development of safeguards technologies and approaches. This work was designed to provide a systematic assessment of a wide variety of technological concepts and specific applications, including analysis of the potential opportunities for and challenges to nuclear safeguards. The analysis framework was developed with the capability of handling a large number of technologies and the flexibility of being easily updated to accommodate the never-ending changes and rapid advancements in emerging technologies. This paper describes the analysis framework that was developed to perform a systematic assessment of a large number of emerging technologies. The technologies are then prioritized with regards to their impact on the field of international safeguards. Several examples of analysis process are also shown.