PNNL

Abstract

The Utility of Social Modeling for Proliferation Assessment project (PL09-UtilSocial) investigates the use of social and cultural information to improve nuclear proliferation assessments, including nonproliferation assessments, Proliferation Resistance (PR) assessments, safeguards assessments, and other related studies. These assessments often use and create technical information about a host State and its posture towards proliferation, the vulnerability of a nuclear energy system (NES) to an undesired event, and the effectiveness of safeguards. This objective of this project is to find and integrate social and technical information by explicitly considering the role of cultural, social, and behavioral factors relevant to proliferation; and to describe and demonstrate if and how social science modeling has utility in proliferation assessment. This report describes a modeling approach and how it might be used to support a location-specific assessment of the PR assessment of a particular NES. The report demonstrates the use of social modeling to enhance an existing assessment process that relies on primarily technical factors. This effort builds on a literature review and preliminary assessment performed as the first stage of the project and compiled in PNNL-18438. [ T his report describes an effort to answer questions about whether it is possible to incorporate social modeling into a PR assessment in such a way that we can determine the effects of social factors on a primarily technical assessment. This report provides: 1. background information about relevant social factors literature; 2. background information about a particular PR assessment approach relevant to this particular demonstration; 3. a discussion of social modeling undertaken to find and characterize social factors that are relevant to the PR assessment of a nuclear facility in a specific location; 4. description of an enhancement concept that integrates social factors into an existing, technically based nuclear facility assessment; 5. a discussion of a way to engage with the owners of the PR assessment methodology to assess and improve the enhancement concept; 6. a discussion of implementation of the proposed approach, including a discussion of functionality and potential users; and 7. conclusions from the research. This report represents technical deliverables for the NA-22 Simulations, Algorithms, and Modeling program. Specifically this report is the Task 2 and 3 deliverables for project PL09-UtilSocial.