Recently, extreme terrorist attacks have frequently occurred around the world and are threatening the international community. It is no longer a safe zone for terrorism in our country. Therefore, domestic nuclear facilities as the highest level of national security facilities have established a physical protection system to protect facilities and lives against terrorist attacks. In addition, security search and access control are conducted for controlled items and unauthorized person. However, with the development of science and technology, disguised weapons or homemade explosives used in terrorism are becoming very sophisticated. Therefore, nuclear facilities need to strengthen security search of weapons or homemade explosives. Since these disguised weapons or homemade explosives are difficult to find only through security search, it is also necessary to actively identify unspecified people who possess disguised weapons or do abnormal behavior. For this reason, the “Abnormal Behavior Detection Method”, which is very effective in preemptive response to potential terrorist risks, has been introduced and operated in aviation security field. Korea Institute of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Control (KINAC) has established a “Practice Environment for Identifying Disguised Weapons” in 2020 for trainees to recognize the dangers of controlled items and to use for physical protection education. This Practice environment has not only the basic explanation of the controlled items of nuclear facilities, but also various actual disguised weapons were displayed. It also introduces actual terrorist incidents using homemade explosives such as attempted bombing of a cargo plane bound for Chicago and the Boston Marathon bombing. And then a model of the disguised explosives actually used is displayed and used for education. In addition, in 2022, the “Abnormal behavior detection method” education module was developed and used for physical protection education. In this module, the outline and introduction of the “Abnormal Behavior Detection Method” and “Behavior Detection Officer (BDOs)” are explained. In this way, the access control and security search system of nuclear facilities require the overall monitoring system, not only for dangerous goods but also for identification of persons possess and carrying them. This study describes the development of the Curriculum for “Disguised Weapon Identification” and “Abnormal Behavior Detection Method” to enhance the effectiveness of physical protection education.

UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) are a rising threat to national facilities due to their cheap price and accessibility. Incidents such as the terrorism attack in Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities and the paralysis of the airport system in England’s Gatwick airport shows the need for integrating CUAS (Counter- Unmanned Aerial Systems) in important national facilities. Recently efforts have been made to evaluate the technical performance of the CUAS. Especially SNL (Sandia National Laboratory) modified the methodology used for PPS (Physical Protection Systems) to develop a performance metrics for CUAS. The performance metrics can be used to effectively analyze the facilities capability of countering drone attacks in a probabilistic way. In this study, we managed to derive the safety boundary of a reference nuclear power plant model based on its current CUAS and protection capabilities with a simplified methodology. Based on the outermost boundary of the model, the time table of the UAS consist of 4 variables which are the assessment time, transmission time, neutralization time and the maximum vehicle velocity. Dividing the maximum velocity to the net time derived, we estimated the minimum sensing point of the CUAS which is the minimum safety boundary of the facility to safely manage the UAV attack. Two practice cases were evaluated with the methodology which is based on the UAV groups classified by the United States DOD (Department Of Defense) that matches the classification of the UAV in Korea. Each variable was assumed to fit the process of a realistic nuclear power plant. Using the variables, we calculated the minimum safety boundary of the facility. With the methodology introduced in this study, regulators and stakeholders can easily evaluate the capability of the facilities CUAS for a design basis UAV attack. Also it can be used as a simple tool to analyze the facilities vulnerability for specific UAV specifications and a guideline to check the protective procedures of the facility.

When exporting nuclear power plants to a third country, the U.S. conditions import countries to join the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Additional Protocol. At the Korea-U.S. summit, Korea also agreed to maintain equal non-proliferation standards. This paper first analyzes how the U.S. applies the conditions for joining additional protocols to export control policies. The U.S. Atomic Energy Act is a general law in the field of nuclear power that governs both civilian and military use of nuclear power. Article 123 stipulates matters related to “cooperation with other countries.” According to Article 123, the United States must conclude a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement with another country that stipulates nuclear non-proliferation obligations for nuclear cooperation to a “significant” extent. Article 123 of the Nuclear Energy Act presents nine conditions for signing the Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, and matters related to safeguards are stipulated in Nos. 1 and 2, and only IAEA’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) is specified as requirements under the current law. As a result of analyzing the countries of the nuclear cooperation agreements currently signed by the United States, the United States is evaluating the AP in terms of the policy as an essential item. Among the nuclear agreements with the United States, three countries, Egypt, Brazil, and Argentina do not have AP in effect. Among them, Brazil and Argentina are recognized by the IAEA as replacing the ABACC with the AP, so only Egypt is not a member of the AP. The nuclear agreement between the U.S. and Egypt was signed in 1981 before the AP existed, and all recently signed agreements were identified as AP-effective countries. As a result of reviewing the U.S. export control laws, the U.S. did not legislate the AP as a condition for peaceful nuclear exports. Reflecting the NSG export control guidelines, AP was legislated as an export license requirement only in exporting sensitive nuclear technology (enrichment, reprocessing). However, it is confirmed that the U.S. policy applies AP entry into force as one of the main requirements for determining whether it is harmful to nuclear exports, along with the conclusion of the Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, the application of the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, and military alliance. The appropriate scope of application of the Additional Protocol in Korea and its application plan will be suggested through future research.

Since 2015, the IAEA has been implementing inspections by changing the paradigm from a nuclear facility level perspective to state level approach in order to enhance effectiveness/efficiency, and random inspections have become a major means of paradigm conversion. From this point of view, Safeguards Division analyzed the implementation status of random inspection conducted in ROK over the past five years by type, facility, and year, and predict the future implementation direction. A total of 106 random inspections have been implemented in ROK over the past five years (2017- 2021). When classified by random inspection type, 20 Short Notice Random Inspections (SNRI), 9 Short Notice Inspections (SNI), 34 Unannounced Inspections (UI), and 43 Random Interim Inspections (RII) were performed, of which RII accounted for the largest proportion with about 40.6%. IAEA conducts customized random inspections according to the characteristics of each nuclear facility. In the past five years, 34 cases of LWR, 20 cases of Bulk Handling Facility, 22 cases of CANDU, 30 cases of random inspections were implemented at R&D facilities, with the largest proportion of LWR. In connection with this, as a result of analyzing the current status of random inspections by year, 19 cases in 2017, 21 cases in 2018, 20 cases in 2019, 19 cases in 2020, and 27 cases in 2021 were implemented, especially in 2021, an increase of about 40% compared to the previous year. In conclusion, the IAEA is increasing the proportion of random inspections every year in line with the updated SLA, and this stance is expected to be maintained in the future. This can be seen as proof that randomized tests are showing an increasing trend even in the COVID-19 pandemic situation that has occurred since December 2019. and, In the case of LWR, it is expected that the form of random inspection may vary depending on the direction of IAEA’s SLA improvement. Through these analyses, it is expected that the direction of future safeguards policy can be established.

The Republic of Korea is implementing safeguards for domestic nuclear facilities through cooperation with the IAEA. But it is not to evaluate the material balance for the material unaccounted for, MUF in the bulk handling facility. Although the development of a material balance evaluation program is underway, there are no related regulations. The State Regulatory Authority, SRA is performing material balance evaluation, MBE on the facility based on the design information and material balance results of the facility. However, it is not possible to directly derive measurement uncertainty for the facility’s measurement equipment, which is an important variable of MBE. To solve this problem, it is trying to derive a method suitable for the domestic environment by investigating the some measurement uncertainty estimation methods and analyzing characteristics of them. In this study, the traditional measurement uncertainty estimation method, GUM method and GUM-S1 method were studied and the advantages and disadvantages were analyzed. Due to the problems mentioned above, the uncertainty quantification technique currently being used cannot be applied to the evaluation of the domestic material balance. Therefore, we are tying to apply them to the evaluation the domestic material balance through the above three methods or a combination of them appropriately. Through this continuing study, it is expected that it will be possible to present a plan to derive measurement uncertainty optimized for the domestic MBE environment.

Nuclear power plants, like other national critical infrastructures, could be under the threat of terrorism or other malicious action. Thus, a nuclear power plant has a robust security system that includes security guards, sensors, barriers, access control systems, lights, and alarm stations with security procedures. However, an effective security system is hard to design because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and there could be a vulnerable hole even in the robust security system. Thus, an effective security system requires the evaluation of all possible scenarios. Evaluation software for security system effectiveness assists in systematically assessing all the possible attack scenarios. Many countries developed security effectiveness evaluation software. The first software was developed by the U.S. Sandia National Laboratories in the 1980s. Now there are several commercially available software packages with a function to simulate limited-scope combat between security guards and attacking enemies. However, academic communication is comparatively weak because it may contain sensitive information on the vulnerability of nuclear power plants. We developed original software called Tools for Evaluating Security Systems (TESS) to identify the most vulnerable path to the designated target and model the security systems of all South Korean nuclear power plants. We also used commercial security effectiveness evaluation software, AVERT, to model the same nuclear power plants. TESS was developed to verify the results of commercial security effectiveness evaluation software for the purpose of regulatory use. For the feasibility test, we compared the results of two software with those of force-on-force (FoF) exercises in nuclear power plants. According to the relevant Act, every nuclear power plant site should perform the FoF exercises every year. KINAC was in charge of evaluating the FoF exercise and used several of its results for the study. In the results, even in some differences in detail, the two software and FoF exercises showed qualitative similarity. Conclusively, evaluation software is a useful tool to design and/or assess the security systems of nuclear power plants. We modeled the security systems of all South Korean nuclear power plants, and compared the developed software, a commercial software and FoF exercises. The results showed qualitative similarity. We provided the results of evaluation to nuclear operators for the better security of nuclear power plants.

In Korea, nuclear regulation is supervised by the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC). The area that required expertise in regulatory activities has been entrusted to the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety (KINS) and the Korea Institute of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Control (KINAC) affiliated to the NSSC. Such nuclear regulatory activities should be implemented fairly and objectively because they directly affect nuclear operators and the entire nuclear industry. In addition, as the recent policy trend has flowed in the direction of improving the business efficiency and quality of public institutions, a study was intended to improve the overall regulatory quality of the institution. First, a case study was performed on the quality management system of domestic and foreign related organizations, including the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the US. Through study and analysis of the system, it was attempted to derive institutional quality requirements for KINAC and to establish a plan to use the requirements as major items of Internal Quality Control (IQC) system. By analyzing the quality management systems of research institutes such as Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) as well as regulatory authority, the characteristics of KINAC that conduct R&D necessary for regulation were reflected. Based on this study, the quality management system leading to IQC-EQA (External Quality Assurance) -TQM (Total Quality Management) will be established continuously to improve the business quality of regulatory authority.

From 1970 to 1990, North Korea’s trade mainly carried out maritime trade through ports for countries around the world. This trend is due to UN sanctions against North Korea, and after the third nuclear test in 2016, North Korea gradually became isolated from the outside world as it expanded to include maritime sanctions in the form of comprehensive sanctions targeting an unspecified majority of North Korea. The logistics structure of North Korea is due to the logistics infrastructure left during the Japanese colonial period in the 1950s and the political structure of the country, with railroads being the main source of logistics and passenger transportation, and roads being secondary. North Korea faced rapid deterioration and lack of facilities after 1990 due to the lack of investment in facilities and improvement of the operating system despite the advanced logistics infrastructure and operating system compared to the South. In particular, the power shortage in North Korea hindered the operation of the railroad and accelerated the aging of the railroad facilities, which has continued to this day. In the 2010s, 96% of cargo transportation in North Korea’s logistics infrastructure depended on railroads and roads, and ports that were developed until the 1980s have deteriorated with little investment since the economic crisis of the 1990s. Although some ports have been developed since 2010, North Korea’s east and west coasts are separated and there is no function of shipping to connect ports, so it did not have a significant impact on enhancing the nation’s port capacity. As North Korea’s trade dependence on China has increased, North Korea has largely relied on land transport, except for some cargoes that are advantageous for marine transport, such as coal. This structure again leads to a decrease in investment in ports, and the current vicious cycle of causing problems with North Korean port facilities is repeated. In this study, North Korea’s land and marine trade logistics system such as railway, road, and shipping and the trend of foreign trade due to sanctions against North Korea were analyzed. Through this analysis, it is planned to be used as a basis for developing the routes and scenarios through which major nuclear items can be transferred in the event of denuclearization of North Korea in the future.

Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), one of the international multilateral export control systems, has designated Trigger List Item and Nuclear Dual-Use Item as control items. The Trigger List Item includes the “Especially Designed or Prepared (EDP)” term as control context. This term is very subjective and vague. Why this ambiguous term reflected in the control context? The EDP term is one of the essential elements of multilateral nuclear export controls since the NPT came into effect in 1970. The EDP concept is the basis of the rules in the Trigger List of NSG Part 1. NSG control items and contexts are decided through consensus among Participate governments, and there are three main reasons for reflecting EDP term in the guideline. First, it is to expand the control network by preventing the diversion of concerned traders. Secondly, technology development is faster than the regulatory speed, and it is tough to put all the items on the list. And last, it is to control other sensitive information such as concerned traders’ shopping list. To reduce the ambiguity of EDP, the US, UK, and Canada presented their interpretation methods at LEEM, a sub-group of the NSG. The United States and Canada have four location criteria (inside the containment building, RCS system or control, RCS system attachment, outside the containment building) and three purpose criteria (custom-made for nuclear power, whether it is an item according to the nuclear industry standard, not made to order) to determine the EDP items. The United Kingdom considers the original design intent and the purpose for which the item was originally designed. They also think about the nature of any specific or unique design features in terms of an item’s “fit,” “form,” and “function” that determine EDP item. Currently, in the case of KINAC, although it is not a controlled item in Korea, items designated by other countries are controlled as EDP items, and detailed standards for parts are prepared and controlled as EDP items. The interpretation of TL’s EDP differs from country to country, and differences are allowed between member states to some extent. Suppose Korea, like the US, UK, and Canada, examines measures to control EDP and reflects it after benchmarking. In that case, it is expected that it will contribute to reducing the export control loopholes for advanced technologies in the future and improve nuclear transparency through strict implementation of Korea’s export controls.

For countering nuclear proliferation, satellite imagery is being used to monitor suspicious nuclear activities in inaccessible countries or regions. Monitoring such activities involves detecting changes over time in nuclear facilities and their surroundings, and interpreting them based on prior knowledge in terms of nuclear proliferation or weaponisation. Therefore, analysts need to acquire and analyze satellite images periodically and have an understanding of nuclear fuel cycle as well as expertise in remote sensing. Meanwhile, as accessibility of satellite information has been increasing and accordingly a large amount of high-resolution satellite images is available, a lack of experts with expertise in both fields to perform satellite imagery analysis is being concerned. In this regard, the Institute of Korea Nonproliferation and Control (KINAC) has developed a prototype of semi-automatic satellite imagery analysis system that can support monitoring of potential nuclear activities to overcome the limitations of professionals and increase analysis efficiency. The system provides a satellite imagery database that can manage acquired images, and the users can load images from the database and analyze them in stages. The system includes a preprocessing module capable of resizing, correcting and matching images, a change detection module equipped with a pixel-object-based change detection algorithm for multi-temporal images, and a module that automatically generates reports with relevant information. In particular, this system continuously updates open-source information database related to potential nuclear activities and provides users with an integrated analytics platform that can support their interpretation by linking related images and textual information together. As such, the system could save time and cost in processing and interpreting satellite images by providing semi-automated analytic workflows for monitoring potential nuclear activities.

Under the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements (NCA) and its administrative arrangement (AA), Korea annually exchanges the inventory of subject items (including nuclear materials (NM), non-nuclear materials, equipment, and related information) with US, Canada and Australia. Also, the government performs export control procedures such as notification or prior consent during importing and exporting of relevant items. It makes NCA a means of realizing the nuclear non-proliferation regime. However, it raises difficulties in management because the entity that uses and treats those items are end-user, not the authorities of AA, the government agency of each country. Accordingly, to increase the accuracy and effectiveness of item management at the national level, it is required to establish a system for the individual company that has the NCA items, considering the characteristics of each company. In this study, significant companies are classified into more than three types, and the management system of the items subject to the agreement is analyzed. Each company’s item management status has different characteristics depending on its role (position) within the entire nuclear fuel cycle, the type of facility, its possessed items, the main form of national trade, and the frequency of domestic movement. Those differences lead to diversity in the management systems currently owned by each company. For example, from the perspective of nuclear materials, institutions requiring bulk management have systematically organized their management system and obligation code program compared to the ‘item institutions’ that can track batch history for all facility inventory changes. Although Domestic law imposes only the duty of origin management on NMs, fuel manufacturers or research institutes have established their standard obligation codes to manage multiple obligations. The non-nuclear materials and equipment can be easily tracked and controlled by individual items. However, the management of NCA items is a complicated task involving various processes, from importing goods to using, storing, managing inventory change, selling to others, or fulfilling the obligations of AA when exporting. In particular, when the movement of items within a company or international trade occurs frequently, or when the end-users are diverse, the management difficulties increase. So a system that can accurately convey and track items subject to the AA is needed. In addition, since various entities are related, it is necessary to improve understanding of NCA items to increase the system’s utilization and effectiveness. The comparison result and requirement for system improvement based on the review above will be reflected in the history management system for items subject to NCA under development.

There are highly toxic radio-isotopes and high heat emitting isotopes in spent nuclear fuels which could be a burden in a deep geological repository. Some preliminary study in order to see if there are some advantages in terms of waste burden, in case that the spent fuel is appropriately processed and then disposed of in a final repository, has been carried out at KAERI. This study is focused on the proliferation resistance for various processing alternatives for them. The evaluation criteria and their indicators for proliferation resistance analysis are selected and then evaluated quantitatively or quantitatively for the alternatives. The processing alternatives are grouped into three categories according to the level of decrease of burden for final disposal and named them as Level I, Level II and Level III technolgy alternatives. Level I alternative is to maximize the long-term safety in the final repository from the removal of I- 129, semi-volatile radioisotope, which is the greatest impact on the long-term safety of the repository. Level II alternative is to remove the strontium-90, high heat emitter, in addition to the removal in Level I. The Level III is to additionally remove uranium from main stream of the level II to reduce the volume of the high level wastes to be disposed. The intrinsic radiation and chemical barriers against the nuclear proliferation are selected and analyised for the alternatives. It is resulted from the proliferation resistance analysis that all three options showed excellent resistance to nuclear proliferation for the two barriers. However, Level III technology including electrochemical refining process is relatively a little weaker than others. Overall, it could be an effective means to reduce the burden of disposal if the spent fuels are appropriately conditioned for final disposal. Further detailed studies are, however, needed to finalize its feasibility.

By Foreign Trade Act and the relevant laws, any organization which intends to export strategic items shall be classified whether the products, S/W, or technology are strategic items and obtain an export license from the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) in case those are nuclearrelated strategic items. The NSSC and KINAC conduct outreach activities to enhance the recognition and implementation of nuclear export and import control. However, ensuring that all target organizations identify and comply with relevant legislation and laws is difficult. Therefore, the government and regulators should continuously make efforts to reduce blind spots for nuclear export and import control. KINAC established the National Nuclear Technology Information Collection and Analysis System (NNTICAS) to find nuclear-related companies through online website information of various companies and to list organizations that handle nuclear-related strategic items. Based on the NICE corporate information website, NNTICAS finds related companies using dynamic collection methods through interactions such as search word input, search button input, check box click, and collected text from each company website using static collection methods through URL address access and HTML source code extraction. After that, the text contained on the company website is analyzed to check whether the predefined normalized word is included, and if the normalized word appears at a certain number or higher, it is judged as a potential target company dealing with nuclearrelated strategic items. Information on the potential target company is compared with the export controlled item list and finally classified as a target company dealing with nuclear-related strategic items. According to the comparison a manually analyzed result of potential target companies and finally selected target companies NNTICAS, it is confirmed that predefined normalized words need to be more detailed, and a controlled item list such as axes (0B001.b.2) needs to be additionally processed. In addition, if the collection is repeated without completing the previous classification of the collected corporate information, it is also possible to collect companies in cosmetics, semiconductors, and displays. Although it was confirmed that some supplementation is needed to use this system to select target companies for the outreach activity, it is also confirmed that target companies for outreach activity can be expanded through this system and is expected to increase the implementation rate and reduce the blind spot for nuclear export and import control.

The bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement provides the basis for technical and economic exchanges and research and development cooperation in the nuclear industry, while also having an important role in the peaceful use of nuclear power. The government of Republic of Korea has signed the supplementary and additional arrangements with the United States, Canada, and Australia to specify detailed procedures necessary for the implementation of the agreement. Currently, items under the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement (i.e., obligated items) are managed through official documents and e-mails, and it is difficult for the government to systemically track item inventory and identify the person in charge. Another issue is the discrepancy of information between the annual report on obligated items and the report under the import and export procedure. In order to solve these problems, the government is establishing an import and export management system for obligated items to enhance transparency and national reliability in Korea. The ultimate purpose of this project is to not only faithfully fulfill the obligations under the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement, but also to increase the efficiency of implementation work through systematization of databases and management of obligated items. In this paper, an improved management procedures are suggested by analyzing the required functions and problems. Also, this paper provides a conceptual design that can be applied to the management system for it obligated items by identifying and analyzing practical problems in the import and export management of mandatory items. As a result, key considerations and the conceptual design proposal for the ‘export and import management system for items subject to the nuclear bilateral cooperation agreement’ are derived. The result will be supplemented through continuous discussions with facility operators and the government to be utilized for detailed system design.

For national security, approximately 500 facilities have been designated as national security facilities. It is divided into grades A, B, and C depending on the fields such as electrics, energy and public service. In 2016, KINAC developed and suggested the installation standards and evaluation indicators for security equipment for national security facilities and they have been utilized to evaluate and manage the facilities. In order to update them by reflecting the recent security trend of the facilities and new technology, KINAC have investigated and updated the installation standards and evaluation indicators for security equipment. As a part of developing installation standards and evaluation indicators for national security facilities project, we conducted survey to identify the status and capabilities of facilities: how the security system is well designed, which type of security equipment is utilized. According to the results, the passive infrared (PIR) sensor is commonly used for interior intrusion detection (not included in 2016 project). Therefore, we investigated the passive infrared sensor and provided its installation standards and evaluation indicators. PIR sensor detects the energy generated by the objects which is different as their temperatures. PIR sensors do not emit any energy like active infrared sensor, and do not measure the energy. Rather, PIRs measure variation in thermal radiation. PIR sensor detects thermal energy by sensing the change between a heat source and the background temperature. In this paper, the characteristics and features of PIR sensor were discussed. Considering them, the standards and indicators to install/evaluated the PIR sensors were also proposed. The results would support national security facility to design and evaluate their security system.

As drone technology and industry develop around the world, the use of drones are increasing in number and expanding to different fields. On the other hand, illegal flight and terrorist incidents using drones are also increasing day by day. In Korea, it is reflected in the “Design Basis Threat (DBT)”, which is the standard for designing and evaluating the physical protection system of nuclear power plants in accordance with the “Act on Physical Protection and Radiological Emergency”, that nuclear power plants continue to establish physical protection against drone threats. A total of 141 drone attacks or incidents have occurred around the world since 2015. Cases related to the Russian-Ukraine war, in which so many cases occurred, were excluded. There were 112 cases (79%) of terrorism or suspected terrorism using a single drone. There were 4 cases of terrorism using more than 5 drones, and a total of 20 drones were used to attack an oil facility in Yemen (2019). By region, a total of 111 incidents occurred in Middle East & North Africa. By country, there were 49 cases in Iraq, 35 cases in Saudi Arabia, and 8 cases in Syria. Among major countries, three cases occured in Korea, five in the United States, two in England, Canada, and Italy, and one in Japan and France. Since 2021, there have been 15 drone attacks. Multiple drones were used in attacks targeting military or large-scale Important National Facilities such as the Saudi oil refinery, Indian Kashmir air base, and reconnaissance of Iranian Natanz nuclear and surrounding military facilities. Also in 89% of the cases, the drones were loaded with explosives in order to cause large-scale damage. Accordingly, nuclear power plants, which are important national facilities, need to establish a system that can detect and respond to multiple drones. Furthermore, additional protective measures are needed for areas that are expected to be severely damaged which can be established by evaluating the impact of explosives on major points in the plant. In additionthere is a high possibility of terrorism by organizations aiming for national turmoil rather than individual terrorists. So it is important to identify signs of terrorism in advance and prepare through cooperation with related agencies.

In order to enter a nuclear power plant, access approval is required in advance, and biometric information such as fingerprints of visitors must be registered when issuing a key card, and only those certified through biometric equipment can enter the nuclear facilities (Protected area II). Fingerprint recognizers and facial recognizers are installed and operated in domestic nuclear facilities for access control. Domestic nuclear facilities establish and implement a protection system in accordance with physical protection requirements under the “Act on Physical Protection and Radiological Emergency” and “Physical Protection Regulations” of each nuclear facility. Detailed implementation standards are specified in Regulation Standard (RS) documents established and distributed by KINAC. Biometrics are mentioned in a KINAC RS-104 (Access Control) document. In this study, it was analyzed what points should be considered in order to prepare for performance tests and establish plans for biometric devices. In order for the results of performance evaluation of biometric devices to obtain high reliability and to be applied to nuclear facilities in the future, standardized performance evaluation targets, procedures, standards, and environments must be created. In order to collect samples such as fingerprints for performance evaluation, the size roll of the sample shall be determined, and the appropriateness of the sample size shall be evaluated in consideration of reliability and error range. In addition, the analysis results for the characteristics (gender, age, etc.) of the sample should be presented. When collecting samples, conflicts with other laws such as personal information protection should be considered, and the reliability of the performance test result data should be analyzed and presented. Quality evaluation should also be performed on forged biometric information data such as silicon fingerprints. In addition, when establishing a performance evaluation plan, a systematic evaluation procedure should be established by referring to domestic and foreign certification and evaluation systems such as the Korea Internet & security Agency (KISA). In order to improve the completeness of the access control system using the biometrics of nuclear facilities, it is necessary to test the performance of biometric devices and to install and operate only devices that have the ability to defend against counterfeit technology. In this study, it was analyzed what points should be considered in order to prepare for performance tests and establish plans for biometric devices.

Monitoring a state that intentionally hides its nuclear activity via open-source information is akin to looking through a black box. Direct information on the state’s nuclear activity remains in the dark, leaving scholars to speculate how much nuclear material or warheads are being produced. Nevertheless, a state’s nuclear program consists of a complex network that ranges from producing weapon-grade nuclear materials by operating its nuclear facilities to securing resources to fund these activities. These indirect activities allow a narrow window of opportunity for researchers to map a state’s activity that sometimes may not be directly linked to nuclear activity per se but is significant to maintaining and operating its nuclear program. These may include malicious cyberattacks to steal or launder cryptocurrency and facilitating cooperation with fellow rogue states that do not comply with the NPT and nuclear nonproliferation regime. The problem lies in how researchers can map this network. Much of the literature that uses text analysis uses data from either (1) formal statement, reports, and documents or (2) journal articles to extract relations between topics that is otherwise difficult to surmise. This study, however, analyzes news articles containing keywords related to a states’ nuclear activity such as international sanctions, trade activities, other states’ policy etc. While news articles fail to live up to the academic rigor of journal articles and unlike formal documents may sometime contain misinformation or incorrect facts, they are a valuable medium to show the day-to-day activity of a state. Although bias may exist as particular news articles may or may not be chosen for text analysis, by using articles collected from 2021 to 2022, this study argues it is enough data to show a short-term trend in nuclear activity.

For safeguarding dry storage facilities, a tomography system based on fast and thermal neutron detection was studied in Korea Institute of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Control. The study was conducted laboratory-scale experiments based on a custom built 1/10th scale model cask, He-4 gas scintillation detector array, and multiple 252Cf sources. A filtered back projection (FBP) was utilized to obtain the cask image via MATLAB. The Ram-Lak filter (ramp filter) was employed in FBP for improved the reconstructed image quality. The Ram-Lak filter is the increasing amplitude filter due to the increasing spatial frequency of the image. In spatial frequency, the frequency of brightness change in the low-frequency region is relatively low, and the frequency of brightness change in the highfrequency region is large. Thus, the high-frequency region in the neutron tomographic image is near the neutron sources and the cask, and the low-frequency region is outside of the cask and/or between the source and cask in the study. In order to apply the ramp filter, a Fourier transform is initially performed on projection data, and image reconstruction is performed with the corrected projection data. In this case, the filter is linearly changed. Therefore, a small filter value is applied at lower spatial frequencies to reduce the projection data, and a large filter value is applied at high spatial frequencies to reduce the projection data. The filter scale is a fraction of frequency amplitude, and the filter value applied to the projection data is determined according to the filter scale. This study was conducted for discussion of the image quality due to the effect of the filter scale used for image reconstruction of a neutron tomography system. The results show that in the experiment with one source, the source location was founded when we used the frequency scale of 0.5 and over. In the double or triple source experiment, the source locations and relative activities were found when we used a filter scale of 0.4 to 0.6. When the filter frequency scale of 0.7 to over, the relative activities are hard to know. It can be found that if the filter value is too large or too small, distortion may occur in the reconstruction results. Therefore, it seems reasonable to set a value between 0.4 and 0.6 as the scaling factor for the neutron tomography system. In the future, additional comparative studies will perform validation of the frequency scaling methods.

Since the National Research and Development Innovation Act. was enacted, evaluation and management of research outputs become more important. The research output is defined as all types of information resources produced from the scientific research activities in each research phase, such as learning, proposing, performing, and publishing. Among them, research outputs mainly from the publishing phase have been systematically managed, including articles, books, technical reports, patents, and software. KINAC, like other Korean R&D institutions, has also achieved growth in research outputs, through continuously increased investment in R&D projects. However, R&D productivity, technology transfer, and commercialization remain low level. The importance of R&D performance diffusion has been emphasized. It’s because the creation of economic value through the utilization of research results has been emerging as a key issue in R&D policy. Therefore, various policies are being nationally pursued to promote the utilization of research achievements, but the results are not being effectively utilized and disseminated. In the field of nuclear nonproliferation and security, it is also difficult to diffuse the R&D performance. In this study, the research outputs of KINAC from 2010 to 2021 were analyzed. A number of research outputs have been made and managed, but the R&D performances have not been analyzed and identified yet. In addition, supportive methods were suggested for efficient performance management toward diffusion. For this purpose, some policies of Korea and other countries concerning performance diffusion -related policies were reviewed. The best practices of performance management and applications were also reviewed and compared to the KINAC cases. As a result, the number of research output has dramatically increased during the last 10 years, showing an average annual total output of 84 and year-on-year increase of 18%. The biggest change was in the conference papers and journals, whereas, there were no trends by year in the case of the technical reports and patents. Of course, it was proportional to the size of the organization, the number of research projects, and its budget. Because many studies highlight the importance of institutional resources, capabilities, and processes for performance management as factors affecting efficient diffusion, the current status of our process was also identified. This study is expected to be applied to the improvement of the performance management of the institute, leading to the enhancement of the R&D performance application.