Nuclear Security Against Insider Smuggling: Review and Recommendations

Abstract Smuggling of nuclear material is one of the serious problems of nuclear security. Nuclear institutes and organizations put great efforts to protect these materials from dangerous hands by applying nuclear security policies, using monitoring tools, and developing access control systems. These techniques effectively prevent outsider threats but cannot provide high confidence withstanding insider threats. History offers many examples of violent employees, who broke the rules and smuggled nuclear material, taking advantage of their knowledge, experience, and authority to access the nuclear facility systems and their vulnerability. Nuclear smuggling operations can be through one insider, multi-insiders, or by the incorporation with an outsider, this makes the facility’s security planning a challenge. The analysis of smuggling crime shows that the motivations for performing insider threats vary. It includes but is not limited to financial gain, poor security culture, and revenge. Lessons learned from other insider crimes in non-nuclear fields are useful for developing nuclear facility plans. Thus, it is enormously important to continuously improve the security system, overcome instrumentation malfunctions, and strengthen the nuclear security culture in the facility. This paper provides a review and recommendations in the legal and technical framework to genuinely prevent insider nuclear threats against nuclear facilities.