IRSN / US- DOE (Department of Energy) collaboration on nuclear security

16th Annual Meeting of the IRSN/PDS - DOE/NNSA Nuclear Security and Safeguards Coordination Group in California.

The annual meeting of the IRSN/PDS - DOE/NNSA Nuclear Security and Safeguards Coordination Group was held in September in San Francisco (USA), followed by visits to facilities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The meeting provided an opportunity to review the many initiatives underway and to look ahead to future projects. 

The year 2023, marked by several meetings between French and American teams, was particularly rich, with in particular joint evaluations of nuclear material detection portals, the evaluation of protection against cyber attacks (DIONYSUS project) at the Sandia American laboratory and at IRSN and real explosion tests in the USA on several types of mock-ups representative of transport containers. The tests will be analysed and joint reports drawn up in 2024.

In 2024, several presentations at conference and publications will be produced.

The 17th meeting will be held at IRSN Octeville-Cherbourg in June 2024.

Joint organisation by IRSN and the US DOE, from 23 to 27 October 2023 in Paris, of an international training course on nuclear security and safeguards on the subject of coordination between physical protection and nuclear material accounting and control systems during a nuclear security event.

What action should be taken if nuclear material goes missing from a nuclear site? Is it a simple tracking error or a theft? Which teams are involved and how can the various measures be coordinated? These were the questions answered by the 16 participants (from Algeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo) in this international training course led by experts from IRSN, the United States, Morocco and Nigeria.
In 2024, this course will take place in Argentina, for countries in the South America zone.