Safeguarding Nuclear Materials in Ukraine

Article reprinted from  Frontiers 2000.

With the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union into more than a dozen nations, social and governmental control over that former nation's nuclear technology and materials was similarly fragmented. Throughout the newly created commonwealth, government-sponsored programs changed emphasis, reduced funding, or in some cases ceased entirely. Brilliant scientists and skilled technicians often found themselves underemployed or unemployed. Nuclear materials and nuclear scientists thus became potential prey for rogue nations intent on becoming nuclear powers.

To meet this threat to world peace, the United States and other western nations have joined with former Soviet republics and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to pursue a number of common goals:

• to safeguard nuclear material and weapons technology;
• to prevent a brain drain from former Soviet weapons laboratories;
• to dismantle nuclear weapons and the associated infrastructure;
• to dispose of excess weapons material; and
• to improve the safety of Soviet-designed nuclear reactors.

Argonne is one of several national laboratories pursuing these goals under the  sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Non-Proliferation and National Security.

In Ukraine, Argonne's TD division (now NE division) is an active partner of a multi-laboratory team upgrading systems to track and protect nuclear materials. The focus of this effort is the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant and three research institutes: the Kiev Institute for Nuclear Research, the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, and the Sevastopol Institute of Nuclear Energy and Industry.

Each research institute keeps a significant inventory of highly enriched uranium on hand for operations, said Charles Roche, who manages Argonne's cooperative programs in nuclear material protection, control and accounting with former Soviet republics. This nuclear material is an attractive target for diversion into programs for the illicit production of nuclear weapons.

To mitigate this possibility, U.S. teams have installed modern security systems at all these facilities. In some cases, Roche said, the security systems installed during the Soviet period had not been upgraded in several decades and were in an advanced state of disrepair. We've installed numerous upgrades including nuclear material storage vaults and remotely operated personnel traps to enforce access control. Other new improvements introduced are central alarm stations served by video monitors and remote cameras, and double-fence perimeters with infrared motion detectors and other intrusion-detection systems.

Tracking nuclear materials
To improve the facilities' ability to track their nuclear materials, DOE supplied late-model desktop computers on which nuclear-material-accounting software, AIMAS (Automated Inventory/Material Accounting System), was installed. AIMAS tracks the movement and amount of nuclear material at each site and records nuclear material deposits and withdrawals. It was designed by Argonne programmers in collaboration with Ukrainian and U.S. specialists to perform the material accounting and reporting required by treaty with the IAEA. AIMAS can also provide information for audits by national and international regulatory inspectors, thus helping to assure the integrity of nuclear material inventory declarations.

To assist in the verification of nuclear material inventories, nondestructive assay instrumentation and training were provided to site scientific staff as they developed procedures to integrate the new technologies into their existing operations.

In addition to improvements at the nuclear facilities, DOE is supplying Ukrainian personnel with nuclear safeguards training. U.S. and Ukrainian experts established a training center at the Kiev Institute for Nuclear Research to teach modern physical protection and material accounting systems for nuclear materials so that the nuclear materials program will continue after the U.S. assistance program ends.

Use of items such as radiation portal monitors, tags and seals, bar coding materials, access and control devices, and inventory software control are among the technologies taught at the Kuzmycz Center. The center is named for George Kuzmycz, manager of DOE's program to improve the security of weapons-usable nuclear materials in Ukraine, who was killed in a traffic accident there in 1997.