This covers the overall objective of the State’s nuclear security regime: protection of persons, property, society and the environment from malicious acts involving nuclear material and other radioactive material. It also covers the objectives of the State’s physical protection regime: protecting against unauthorized removal; locating and recovering missing nuclear material; protecting against sabotage; and mitigating or minimizing the effects of sabotage. It addresses achieving these objectives through prevention (deterrence and protection of sensitive information), management (detection, delay, and response) and mitigation of consequences of malicious acts.

This covers the responsibility of the State for the establishment, implementation and maintenance of a physical protection regime.

This covers the responsibility of the State for ensuring that nuclear material is adequately protected during international transport until the responsibility is transferred to another State. This includes how this responsibility is determined, ensuring that nuclear material is always under the State’s jurisdiction and continuous control, oversight of international transport operations, and considerations for the shipping State before allowing international transport. State responsibilities for the transport of Category I nuclear material are also covered.

This covers the definition and assignment of physical protection responsibility to response forces, operators and, if appropriate, carriers. It also covers integration and coordination of responsibilities and maintaining clear lines of responsibility.

This covers the responsibility of the State for establishing and maintaining a legislative and regulatory framework to govern physical protection that includes physical protection requirements and a system of evaluation and licensing or authorization that includes inspection and enforcement. It also addresses conditions of licensing or authorization, exercises (including training and readiness of guards and response forces), trustworthiness determinations, enforcement and sanctions.

This covers the responsibility of the State for establishing or designating a competent authority which is responsible for the implementation of the legislative and regulatory framework, as well as the provision to the competent authority of adequate authority, competence and financial and human resources to fulfil its assigned responsibilities. This also covers the legal status and independence of the competent authority, access to information by the competent authority, timely reporting of nuclear security events, informing the competent authority of changes in facility or transport security and responsibilities of the competent authority (including compliance with physical protection regulations, inspections, evaluations and ensuring corrective action is taken).

This covers the responsibility of the State for ensuring that the responsibilities for implementing physical protection are clearly identified and that the prime responsibility for implementation of physical protection rests with the license holders (operators or shippers). It covers the compliance of license holders with regulations and requirements, cooperation and coordination among State entities with physical protection responsibilities, the responsibility of the operator to ensure control of nuclear material at all times and to report accounting discrepancies and the preparation and implementation of a security plan by the operator. It also covers security during site selection and design (security by design), the development of means and procedures for evaluations (including performance testing), maintenance of the physical protection system, and implementation of compensatory measures.

This covers international cooperation, consultation and information exchange on physical protection techniques and practices, points of contact for physical protection and the provision of information in the case of unauthorized removal or sabotage or credible threats thereof.

This covers the definition and evaluation of the current threat (and its associated capabilities) and the use of the threat in the State’s physical protection system, to include the insider threat, airborne threats and stand-off attacks. It covers the development of a threat assessment and design basis threat, when States might choose a design basis threat, and the application of both to physical protection of nuclear materials in use, storage and transport. It also addresses the review of the threat and evaluating how changes in the threat affect the design basis threat and the threat assessment.

This covers ensuring that the State’s physical protection regime is capable of establishing and maintaining risk at acceptable levels through risk management, assessment of threat and consequences and the establishment of a legislative, regulatory and programmatic framework. It elaborates on managing risk by reducing the threat, improving the effectiveness of physical protection systems, and reducing the potential consequences of malicious acts.

This covers using a graded approach that accounts for the current evaluation of the threat, the nuclear material attractiveness and its nature as well as the potential consequences associated with its unauthorized removal or a successful act of sabotage. It elaborates on the State’s regulation of the categorization of nuclear material and the relationship between the categorization and physical protection measures, as well as the establishment of a threshold of unacceptable radiological consequences.

This covers the implementation of the concept of defence in depth in a State’s requirements for physical protection. It covers the use of defence in depth for the three physical protection functions of detection, delay and response and accounting for both insider threats and external threats.

This covers organizations involved in implementing physical protection, giving due priority to security culture and its development, maintenance and implementation. This includes the recognition of a credible threat, the roles and responsibilities of the State, organizations, managers and individuals. It also covers the issuance of a statement of security policy and personnel awareness and education on physical protection.

This covers the establishment and implementation of a quality assurance policy and programmes, including ensuring that the physical protection system is maintained in a condition capable of effectively responding to the threat assessment or design basis threat and that the physical protection system meets the State’s regulations and requirements.

This covers the State’s establishment of requirements for protecting the confidentiality of information, the unauthorized disclosure of which could compromise physical protection. This includes specifying what information should be protected and how (using a graded approach), limiting access to such information to those whose trustworthiness is established, and imposing sanctions against those persons violating confidentiality.

This covers the State’s establishment of a sustainability programme encompassing operating procedures, human resource management and training, equipment updating, maintenance, repair and calibration, performance testing and operational monitoring, configuration management, resource allocation and operational cost analysis.

This covers the establishment, preparation, approval, exercising and initiation of contingency plans to respond to unauthorized removal of nuclear material or sabotage of nuclear facilities or nuclear material, accounting for the actions of the response forces. It also covers coordination between guards and response forces during a nuclear security event and between guards, response forces, other response teams and other facility personnel for implementation of security plans. Finally, it covers arrangements to be made during emergency conditions and exercises related to the effectiveness of the physical protection system.

This covers the objectives of the State’s physical protection regime related to unauthorized removal of nuclear material and the application of the current guidance to protection against unauthorized removal of nuclear material, accounting for requirements for protection against sabotage.

This covers the categorization of nuclear material as the basis for a graded approach for protection against unauthorized removal of nuclear material, including a categorization system. It also addresses potential reasons for changing the categorization of particular types of material and for determining levels of physical protection in a facility.

This covers general requirements to be imposed for physical protection against unauthorized removal of nuclear material. This includes the effectiveness of the physical protection system against both sabotage and unauthorized removal, the protection of computer-based systems against compromise, assessment and management of the interfaces with safety and nuclear material accountancy and control (NMAC) activities, and protection of material that is to be protected in accordance with prudent management practice.