Security at nuclear plant improved through satellite

23 May 2005

The ESA Telecom supported project 'Satellite based Alarm and Surveillance System' (SASS) has recently begun field trials connecting, among others, a nuclear power plant in Slovakia to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna Austria.

SASS enables secure and reliable transmission via satellite of alarm signals, including live video pictures, still images and data with a high transmission performance. The IAEA is testing SASS's ability to monitor nuclear facilities in near real-time without the limitations of poor terrestrial network infrastructure found at many locations.

This will not only provide higher quality information in a shorter time. The system is always-on for increased vigilance and safety. The worldwide coverage offered by SASS and is also of particular interest to the IAEA.

The IAEA will initially test the SASS system during a 3 months field trial phase under a cooperation agreement with ESA and being the Prime Contractor of the SASS project MediaMobil Communication GmbH of Germany.

One SASS terminal has been installed at IAEA Headquarters in Vienna (image right) and initial trials are successful. This terminal will be used during the field trial phase mainly to test new alarm and security applications enabled by the SASS system for the IAEA´s Nuclear Safeguards and Verification work.


IAEA Headquarters

A second terminal has been installed at a nuclear plant in the Slovak Republic. It is being initially used to complement and enhance the capacity of telephone lines for regular download of information collected by IAEA monitoring systems.

Applications Strategy Manager for ESA Telecom, Mr Pierluigi Mancini said about the importance this cooperation represents: "ESA is extremely pleased to demonstrate to the IAEA the intrinsic relevance Satcom has for real user needs."

Satellite Based Alarm and Surveillance System
SASS is specifically designed for security applications. It meets European performance requirements for transmission networks with the highest security classification in terms of quality-of-service, alarm transmission time, line fault reporting time, availability and information security.

This is achieved by the development of advanced mechanisms for the allocation of satellite network resources dependent on traffic priorities, bandwidth on-demand management and real time monitoring of the end-to-end transmission links.

The system is based on DVB-RCS technology, which has been actively promoted by ESA for the past several years. DVB-RCS enables satellite transmission with speeds up to 2 Mb/s and higher using small satellite terminals with antenna diameters of around 1 m. DVB-RCS is now becoming an industry standard, which will result in low terminal and service costs.

To read more about the ESA Telecom supported SASS just click on related links at the right of this page.

All images courtesy Dean Calma (IAEA)