A Proposed Non-Intrusive System for the Verification of Sensitive Nuclear Material

Abstract

One of the primary challenges in negotiating treaties related to the control of Nuclear Materials (NM) is the verification process, particularly when dealing with sensitive information. Normally, in this process, the inspector utilizes a suitable measuring system to verify the declared information. The difficulty may arise whenever sensitive information related to the NM should not be released to an inspector. Simultaneously, the NM owner (operator) should remain unaware of the measuring system employed by the inspector to prevent any probable manipulation. To address this issue, a neutral third party is assumed to act as an intermediary, who matches the data declared by the operator with the results obtained by the inspector, without exchanging any information between them. In this work, a Non-Intrusive System (NIS) is proposed and tested to play this role. The system receives data and information from both the operator and the inspector in the form of CAD or Monte Carlo (MC) input files, in addition to the results of measurements performed by the inspector. Then the system performs calculations and combines the results of these calculations with the inspector's measurement result to estimate the mass of the NM. The only information automatically conveyed to the inspector is the final conclusion regarding whether the declared and the estimated masses of NM are matched or not. The proposed NIS concept is tested using samples of NMs, and the results are presented.