DOE policy/perspectives on domestic safeguards termination criteria

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has issued safeguards termination limits (STLs) to assist in decisions related to removal of nuclear material to waste. STLs are quantitative criteria below which nuclear materials control, accountability, and physical protection can be removed. STLs allow safeguarded material to be discarded to waste management facilities. STLs are essential to implementing the DOE's stabilization, storage, and dispositioning plans for residues and other by-product materials and ensuring that discard decisions consider the potential for diversion for purposes of weapons proliferation and sabotage. STLs can support decisions that can reduce the costs of facility safeguards and security controls. STLs can ensure continued operation of DOE nuclear facilities that must discard material in order to continue operations and support facility decontamination activities. Finally, STL criteria establish a framework for ensuring that waste management and environmental concerns, processing constraints, proliferation issues, and economics are all considered in the disposition of plutonium-bearing materials and in the development of discard limits. STLs should serve as the ceiling below which discard limits are established. In summary, removing nuclear materials from safeguards at DOE facilities is critical to ongoing processing and dispositioning activities and is necessary not only for the continued operation but also for the closure of DOE nuclear facilities. Quantitative STL criteria are useful in this removal decision. For material forms not covered under criteria, recoverability testing may be useful. Decisions for removing these materials from safeguards must be appropriately balanced against risks to national security, health and safety, and the environment. These decisions must support broad nuclear nonproliferation policies and accommodate the treaty and moral obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the international community, respectively