Experiences from the ITRAP pilot study

Illicit trafficking and inadvertent movement of nuclear and other radioactive materials is not a new phenomenon. However, concern about such activities has increased remarkably in the last decade. Although the number of such incidents has risen, the overall extent of the problem is not restricted to Europe and not to nuclear proliferation. A few percent of these incidents involve so-called 'special nuclear materials', which may be used for nuclear weapons and therefore cause a threat of nuclear proliferation. The vast majority of these incidents, however, involve radioactive sources, low-enriched, natural or depleted uranium, which are not usable for weapons. There have been instances in which loss of control over radioactive materials has led to serious, even fatal, consequences to persons. Examples include unintentional incorporation of radioactive materials into recycled steel, recovery of lost radioactive sources by unsuspecting individuals, and deliberate purloining of radioactive material. The ITRAP project - financed by the Austrian Government and executed by the Austrian Research Center in close cooperation with the IAEA, World Customs Organisation (WCO) and Interpol - aimed at finding international consensus on specifications for detection equipment and instrumentation as well as verification of such specifications in laboratory tests and field installations. Under the umbrella of the pilot study, 23 international companies participated in the study and many of them devised improvements of their monitoring equipment. An important element of this study was the harmonized establishment of detection thresholds for practical implementation at borders or similar checkpoints. However, equally important was the verification of agreed specifications in controlled laboratory conditions and in realistic operating environments (field tests). All crucial parameters, as inter alia the false alarm rate, were verified by a significant testing effort as compared to approaches based on statistical calculations only