A Systematic Approach to Nuclear Safeguards Decision-Making

The regulatory decision on how safe a safeguarded nuclear facility should be depends on a trade-off between diversion risk and the cost of reducing that risk. Given that one plans to build the plant, the optimum level of safeguards is achieved when the cost of further risk reduction exceeds the benefit from lower risk. This paper develops quantitative models of factors that influence this risk/cost trade-off. A basic conceptual structure is presented, and a detailed example is used to illustrate the methodology for optimal regulation setting.