Application of electronic sealing systems for nuclear material monitoring

The present description covers an electronic sealing system suitable to be utilized for international safeguards and physical protection purposes. The VACOSS sealing system (Variable Coding Seal System for Nuclear Material Control) developed by the Juelich Nuclear Research Center is intended to seal rooms and containers with nuclear material, nuclear instrumentation of the operator as well as of the supervisory authority. The sealing system is easy to handle, reusable, portable and of small size. It consists of the three components: seal, adapter box, and simulation program. The simulation program is located in the office of the supervising agency, permitting the decoding of coded data read out from the seal and, thus, determination of the opening and closing events in terms of time