Nuclear terrorism risk reduction: Evaluating the effectiveness of the Department of Energy's United States/Russian nuclear Material Protection Control and Accounting (MPC&A) program

The dissertation examines the relative effectiveness of the DOE MPC&A Program. It asks "how effective has the program been at increasing the physical security for Russian nuclear material", operationalizing the variable of "effective" in terms of risk reduction. Assumptions include (1) a quantifiable reduction of risk to Russian nuclear targets suggests that US/Russian efforts to increase security have been effective; and (2) the case study selected is a representative sample of projects currently active in NA-25 to upgrade Physical Protective Systems (PPS) to reduce risk to nuclear warheads and material.; Findings include: (1) The MPC&A program has been successful to the extent it has been allowed to be by US and Russian actors; (2) Nuclear targets at sites where access has been allowed are measurably safer; (3) Nuclear targets where access has thus far not been authorized are unlikely to be measurably safer; (4) "Measurably safer" has meaning only in relation to the design basis threat against which physical protective systems were designed. At threat levels sufficiently elevated above design basis threats, "measurably safer" becomes meaningless; (5) To the extent that a larger number of nuclear targets have not yet been provided with upgrades than those that have, the program has been less successful than anticipated; (6) To the extent that remaining nuclear targets may be concentrated at a smaller number of sites, should access eventually be granted to these it is likely that total percentages of nuclear targets for which physical security has been upgraded would increase sharply; (7) Funding is determinative to programmatic pace of progress. It is not, however, the only determining factor. If funding were unlimited, pace of progress would still be limited by the number of sites to which access was available. If all sites were suddenly accessible, pace of progress would still be limited by numbers of trained personnel and other infrastructure constraints. Accelerating rate of progress will require addressing all three; (8) The operational parameters of the Russian environment, to include, particularly, contending infrastructure priorities, are such that it is unlikely that rate of progress will be successfully increased from the bottom-up. Instead, successful strategies will most likely incorporate top-down mechanisms.