Revisions Sought In Nuclear Security

The National Research Council has told the Department of Energy that DOE needs to change the way it thinks about protecting nuclear weapons and other nuclear materials. Recommending a “total systems approach” to keeping nuclear material from terrorists, the NRC report said the current approach does not consider the interactions among the various security countermeasures that are already in place nor take into account the activities of other federal agencies that have some responsibility for nuclear security. Among its recommendations to DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, NRC said the agency should utilize methods of traditional risk assessment to improve its understanding of security risks along with creative scenario generation techniques and security best practices.