Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
11/13/2015
Analysts and specialists from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) this week in Washington, D.C., highlighted research projects that offer nuclear nonproliferation applications.
Speaking at the American Nuclear Society’s annual winter meeting, IAEA analyst Regine Schuler said that to provide credible assurance “that states are fulfilling their safeguards obligations and that no nuclear material is diverted from peaceful uses,” the U.N. organization uses link analysis software that analyzes large data sets and identifies clusters of links in the development of scientific knowledge. “We extract key information such as author, title, affiliation” from technical publications, Schuler said, and use the software to determine the countries involved in nuclear activities, the type of material being used, and other countries or institutions with which these entities are collaborating. The technology should complement traditional methods of analysis, she added. “First we get rid of what is not really relevant,” Shuler said, and then begin a qualitative, human analysis of clusters of links.
Tom Wood, senior advisor in PNNL’s Nonproliferation Treaties and Agreements research group, took a market-based approach for nonproliferation policy, noting that much of the allocation of nuclear materials and technology occurs in markets and “is done according to economic principles.” Because market participants act out of self-interest, a viable nonproliferation objective then becomes removing “all of the economic incentive for the building of new enrichment facilities.” A policy proposal to this end, Wood said, is “to make enrichment services for the production of [low-enriched uranium] highly subsidized . . . to some group of nuclear consumers” to prevent new entrants into the enrichment market, thereby avoiding the proliferation of enrichment technology.
PNNL risk and decision science engineer Garill Coles offered approaches to assessing proliferation resistance, which is “the difficulty of diversion of nuclear material from declared flows or inventories, undeclared production and replication of facilities and equipment.” Coles argued that “agreement on a framework that defines proliferation risk could lead to better understanding and communication about proliferation risk amongst different communities,” including political scientists.
