Volume 7, Number 3
April 2010

International Workshop for Users of Proliferation Assessment Tools Workshop I: Users in Regulatory Roles

By Adrienne M. LaFleur, President, Texas A&M Student Chapter
(Photos by James Miller)

A large number of approaches to proliferation assessment have been developed or are currently under development. These tools are used by a number of different types of users for a range of purposes. Continued dialogue about these tools and approaches is a valuable way to help prevent inconsistent application or misuse of the technologies as well as provide a venue for the development of new approaches. To provide a venue for developers and users to explore these assessment methodologies, a workshop was held at Texas A&M University from Feb. 23-25, 2010. The goal of this workshop was to develop a research agenda that is responsive to the specific needs of users in regulatory roles.

This workshop was organized by the INMM Standing Committee on Proliferation Assessments and Methodologies and hosted by the Texas A&M University Student Chapter of INMM. This workshop was organized by the INMM Standing Committee on Proliferation Assessments and Methodologies and hosted by the Texas A&M University Student Chapter of INMM. The workshop had 65 participants from a broad range of organizations including academia, national laboratories, industry, government, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

During the workshop, developers discussed the status of the field and current research. Users discussed the current and anticipated needs to which assessment and methodology approaches could contribute. The workshop focused heavily on proliferation resistance methodologies; however, proliferation risk analysis, material attractiveness assessment, statistical analyses to assess proliferation determinants, and quantitative analysis to estimate the likelihood a State will proliferate were also discussed. Panel sessions were held to discuss the utility of current tools and future needs for a path forward for these approaches.

The results from this workshop identified numerous questions that need to be answered by current and developing proliferation resistance methodologies. This is important to ensuring that the methods developed produce results that meet the needs of the of the intended user group. In addition, this also helps to focus research efforts to improve these approaches by identifying areas that need more work. The workshop results also identified several areas for future work for proliferation resistance tools which included:

• Effectively communicate results to different audiences via outreach to other communities to bridge communication gap and provide a forum for informed information
• Develop test cases and “benchmark” standards that can be tested against (prototypic cases and small systems studies) to help facilitate verification of these methodologies
• Perform systems study on expert elicitation
• Obtain a better understanding of how proliferation resistance and risk relate to export control

This workshop was the first in a series of workshops that will attempt to improve the user group’s understanding of available tools and perspectives of other user groups, identify specific needs of user groups, and develop a research agenda and path forward to address those needs.