NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION AND SAFEGUARDS ACTIVITY

In 2001, after Lithuanian Government officially requested US assistance to interdict illicit nuclear material trafficking, INTA allocated very significant human and material resources in working in this area. Once the US Department of Energy decided to install full scope independent and self-sustainable radiological material detection, data recording and transmission system at the Vilnius International Airport, INTA was chosen to work as integrating contractor for this project. INTA made significant contribution to the system design and choice of equipment. As an integrating contractor, INTA closely coordinated the entire project with such Lithuanian agencies as the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Vilnius Airport Administration, Ministry of the Interior Central Office, Lithuanian Border Guard Service, State Security Office, a number of other Lithuanian governmental agencies and private companies. INTA’s employees acquired very significant training in handling radiological detection equipment, specialized and INPP approved monitoring and data transmission devices, IT networking, etc. In addition to higher level coordination, INTA’s employees under close guidance of Canberra Aquila, directly participated in all the aspects of technical work: networks integration, radiological detection equipment installation and fine-tuning, cabling, data handling.

Since 2002, under the contracts with Pacific Northwest National Laboratories and Sandia National Laboratories, INTA searched formerly Soviet industrial and military sites and located quite significant quantities of abandoned material, which currently is being securely stored at INNP RDD storage. Also, INTA assisted in locating and managed repackaging and securing of very significant monitoring upgrades of RDD site at Maisiagala, where for nearly 40 years Soviet military Baltic district was dumping unaccounted and unregistered RDD and other unknown fissile material. Once unprotected and unmonitored, this site pose grave and very real RDD proliferation risk. In addition to this work, INTA has been in charge of upgrading RDD material security at 5 Lithuanian oncology hospitals.