Chuck Carson

Good morning. I’m Chuck Carson, Deputy Director of Sandia’s International Security Center, where our programs in nonproliferation and arms control are managed.

This afternoon I will be facilitating a breakout group that addresses "Surety in Nuclear Material Management," and I’d like to give you a flavor for what we will be discussing.

First, the management of nuclear materials, materials such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium, is a critically important, multi-dimensional challenge. The pictures in this slide (that I will be talking about for the next few minutes) illustrate some of that dimensionality. Nuclear Material Management is global in scale, with nuclear material held by countries around the world; and some of those countries with nuclear materials are facing serious economic or political crises. Nuclear material occurs in both the civilian and the defense sectors in the various countries and can follow many different paths as it moves from initial extraction or refining to final disposition. As indicated in the photos at the bottom, along those paths, it can be in storage, in transit, or in process, and these different states impose very different requirements on material management systems. Here we show a domestic US storage site, a well-established system for transporting nuclear material, and exploratory work aimed at improved handling.

Second, the challenges associated with managing nuclear material are real. Nuclear power plays an important role in the developing world; and to the entire world, it may eventually offer a solution to concerns of global warming. Furthermore, as we saw last spring, more countries are finding comfort in a nuclear defense component. Regardless of whether we believe that nuclear power or nuclear arsenals are growing or shrinking, recent events, such as the recently uncovered black market activities in smuggled nuclear material, have underscored the importance of effective management of the world’s supply of nuclear material. In the wrong hands, weapons-usable materials can constitute a significant risk to our nation and the world; this is one of the major proliferation concerns today. Similarly, if handled improperly or protected inadequately, commercial reactor-grade materials comprise a risk to health and to the environment. The concepts of surety in normal, abnormal, and hostile or malevolent environments frame nicely the challenges of nuclear materials management.

Third, our community has been addressing these challenges for more than five decades, and many sophisticated and successful "point solutions" exist for several of the stops along the paths from extraction to final disposition of materials. The photos in this chart illustrate solutions in all three surety environments.

1. Normal storage, handling, and monitoring of nuclear materials — advanced storage and handling systems at Pantex and an early joint monitoring project involving the US and Russia. One focus of such efforts is to assure that the nuclear material will be used as intended;
2. Upgrades at a Russian storage site as part of the DOE’s MPC&A program; and
3. Testing of material shipping casks to assure safety and a graphic illustration of potential consequences when safety systems fail.

We at Sandia have been working with our domestic and international counterparts to improve material management systems worldwide. The point solutions that have been developed appropriately utilize all of the first three levels of surety solutions — some involve "open loop" systems and others allow for human or automatic intervention in off-normal conditions.

Finally, many of us feel that, building on these point successes, what is needed is an integrated system to address end-to-end, cradle to grave, management of nuclear materials — a system that achieves a balanced, seamless approach to nuclear material management. Exploration of this perceived need will be a major focus of our breakout group.

When we look through the lens provided by nuclear material management, we see "surety" to mean precisely those things we have always sought in our systems: assurance of the declared or intended use of nuclear materials in normal circumstances, safety of those materials in abnormal environments, and security of materials in malevolent conditions. We are excited about the opportunity this workshop provides for us to change our vantage point, to look through the lens the other direction, as it were — to view the challenges of nuclear material management from the perspective offered by the surety framework that Dr. Vandevender outlined earlier. While there is no presumption that applying the Surety principles in this area will lead to new approaches, doing so may help us identify elements of an integrated materials management system that may have been under-emphasized, or even overlooked. And today’s workshop should allow us to chart a path forward toward meeting the challenges of "Surety in Nuclear Material Management."

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