IAEA SafeguardsAn Overview

Nuclear safeguards are a key element in
international action against the spread of nuclear weapons. Safeguards are directed at the verification
of peaceful use commitments, given by States through international agreements
to use nuclear materials and facilities for exclusively peaceful purposes. Broadly, safeguards may be described as a
complex system of declarations by States, verified by inspections and
evaluations, undertaken principally by the IAEA.

It should be
emphasised that the task of safeguards is not prevention, except in so far as
risk of discovery may act as a deterrent to a would-be proliferator. Nor is the IAEA an international
policeman. Rather, the political
objective of safeguards, in simple terms, is to exercise a positive influence
on the behaviour of States by:

• providing assurance to reinforce
  non-proliferation commitments; and
• deterring non-compliance through the
  risk of timely detection.

Importantly, safeguards serve to assist
States who recognise it is in their own interest to demonstrate their
compliance to others. Thus safeguards
are an important confidence-building measure in their own right, as well as
being a major complement to the broader range of international
confidence-building measures.

Safeguards are complemented by other
important elements in the non-proliferation regime such as: export controls on
nuclear items; political incentives and sanctions; and national intelligence
activities. Some institutional and
technical aspects of non-proliferation are discussed at page 65.

Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)

The NPT is the centrepiece of the
international nuclear non-proliferation regime. The Treaty was concluded in 1968 and entered into force in
1970. It is now almost universal, with
187 Parties. Only four States remain
outside the NPT. Three (Israel, India
and Pakistan) have unsafeguarded nuclear activitiesthe fourth, Cuba, has
safeguards on all existing nuclear activities.

The overwhelming majority of States have
renounced nuclear weapons, recognising that the possession of these weapons
would threaten, rather than enhance, their national security.

The NPT has
been essential to establishing the conditions under which the renunciation of
nuclear weapons has been possible. It
has done this by providing:

• a legal framework within which States
  can express their commitment to use nuclear energy for exclusively peaceful
  purposes; and
• a credible verification mechanism,
  IAEA safeguards, to assist States demonstrate that they are honouring their
  Treaty commitments and to give them confidence that others are doing the same.

The key provisions of the NPT can be outlined as follows:

• Nuclear-weapon States (NWS)^[5] agree not to assist any non-nuclear-weapon State (NNWS) to acquire
  nuclear weapons.
• NNWS agree not to acquire nuclear
  weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, and to accept IAEA safeguards on
  all their current and future holdings of nuclear material (full scope or
  comprehensive safeguards).
• All Parties agree to cooperate in the
  peaceful uses of nuclear energybut not to supply nuclear items to a NNWS
  except under safeguards.
• All Parties agree to pursue nuclear
  disarmament, and complete and general disarmament.

IAEA Safeguardsthe
Classical System

The system of
safeguards developed to give effect to the full scope safeguards commitment
under the NPT is commonly described as the classical system. The classical system is characterised by:

• an emphasis on the verification of
  nuclear materials accountancy, using containment and surveillance as
  complementary measures; and
• a focus, inherited from pre-NPT
  safeguards, on the concept of diversion as comprising the removal of nuclear
  material from declared facilities or locations.

The legal basis for classical safeguards is
an agreement concluded by each State with the IAEA. In the case of the full scope (now more commonly called
comprehensive) safeguards applied to NNWS NPT Parties, these agreements are
based on an IAEA document referred to as INFCIRC/153 (Information Circular
number 153).

The central feature of IAEA safeguards is
inspectionsthe verification of nuclear material in declared facilities by
safeguards inspectors. Nuclear facility
operators are required to maintain, under the supervision of each countrys
national safeguards authority, detailed accounting records of all movements and
other physical transactions involving nuclear material. IAEA inspectors regularly visit nuclear
facilities to verify the completeness and accuracy of this documentation
through activities such as checking inventories, sampling and other analytical
procedures.

Nuclear material accountancy is
complemented by other technical measures such as containment (e.g. the
placement of special seals on nuclear items), and surveillance (e.g. the
operation of automatic cameras), to maintain continuity of knowledge between
inspections. With the increasing
complexity of modern nuclear facilities, especially large-scale bulk-handling
facilities such as reprocessing plants, use of containment and surveillance is
assuming greater importance.
Containment and surveillance, in the form of remote monitoring systems,
are also becoming increasingly important as a way of improving both the
cost-efficiency and the effectiveness of safeguards.

The classical
safeguards system has provided the international community with a high level of
assurance that all the nuclear material declared to the IAEA by NPT
Parties remains in the civil nuclear fuel cycle. However, events in Iraq showed the limitations of the classical
system and prompted a program to strengthen safeguards, in order to address the
possibility of undeclared nuclear activities.

Strengthened Safeguards

From the early 1990s, the IAEA, with the
assistance of Member States, has been engaged in a major undertaking to
strengthen and streamline the safeguards system. The principal directions of the strengthened safeguards system
currently under development are to:

• shift the focus from declared inventories and flows of nuclear
  material at individual facilities, towards safeguards approaches based on
  evaluation of the State as a whole;
• provide credible assurance of the absence of undeclared
  nuclear material and activities in the State; and
• diversify the methods of detection, introducing methods based upon
  quite different principles (such as environmental analysis), resulting in a
  more robust system.

Early in the strengthening process two
broad groups of safeguards strengthening measures were identified: Part 1
measures which the IAEA could implement under current safeguards agreements,
and Part 2 measures which required additional or complementary legal
authority. Part 1 measures include
enhanced information collection and analysis, environmental sampling at nuclear
sites, and use of unannounced inspections.
To provide the necessary legal authority for Part 2 measures, it was
decided to establish an Additional Protocol, a legal instrument that would
complement existing safeguards agreements.

The Additional Protocol

The text of the Additional Protocol (published by the IAEA as
INFCIRC/540), to be used as a model for each State to conclude a Protocol with
the IAEA, was negotiated in a Special Committee of the IAEA Board of Governors,
and was agreed in May 1997. Australia
played a major role in the negotiation of the Additional Protocol and, as
outlined in the following article in this Report, was the first State to bring
an Additional Protocol into effect.

Key elements of
the strengthened safeguards regime, of which the Additional Protocol is a
central element, are:

• The IAEA receives considerably more
  information on nuclear and nuclear-related activities, including through an
  Expanded Declaration by each State and widened reporting requirements. This includes, inter alia, information on nuclear-related R&D activities,
  production of uranium and thorium, production of heavy water and graphite, and
  nuclear-related imports and exports.

• IAEA inspectors have substantially
  increased access rights, termed complementary access to:
  • anywhere on a nuclear site;
  • various locations included in the
    Expanded Declaration; and
  • locations elsewhere in the State to
    carry out environmental sampling and other verification measures.

At
nuclear sites and certain locations listed in the Expanded Declaration the
Agency has right of access to confirm that there is no undeclared nuclear
material or activities at those places.
Access on nuclear sites can be short-notice, two hours or less, if
carried out with a routine or other inspection. Elsewhere access is given to enable the Agency to resolve any
question or inconsistency arising from its information review. The State may require that access be on a
managed basis to protect certain categories of information.

• Environmental sampling is initially to
  be location-specific, but the Protocol recognises the possibility of using
  wide-area environmental sampling, looking for nuclear indications over
  extensive areas, once the efficacy of this technique has been established.
• Information analysis and the conduct
  of complementary access are to be used to establish a State Evaluation, that
  is, the IAEA applies its safeguards approaches and draws its conclusions on the
  basis of the State as a whole.

Progress with strengthened
safeguards

As mentioned above, a range of strengthened
safeguards measures (Part 1 measures) were introduced under existing
safeguards agreements, and have now been in operation for some five years. Part 2 measures require the conclusion of
Additional Protocolsthese have proceeded more slowly than Australia would
wish, though it is recognised that many States have had to introduce complex
legislation and administrative arrangements.
At 30 June 2000 only 11 Protocols were in force^[6]a further 44 had been signed or approved by the IAEA Board of
Governors. It is of concern however
that there were 23 NNWS NPT Parties with nuclear activities that had yet to
commit to concluding Protocols.

Substantial work has been undertaken, and
is ongoing, developing the approaches and procedures, technologies, quality
systems, evaluation methodologies and reporting required to ensure that the
strengthened safeguards system will be effective in practice. As outlined elsewhere in this Report,
Australia is actively involved in this process.

Information analysis is an essential component
of strengthened safeguards. An
important aspect of this is acquisition path analysis, that is, assessment of
the feasible opportunities available to the particular State to produce or
acquire nuclear material to manufacture nuclear weaponsseparated plutonium or
HEU (high enriched uranium) of suitable quality. A would-be proliferator needs either access to such materials
directly or the technologies required to upgrade nuclear materialsi.e.
enrichment capability to produce HEU or reprocessing capability to separate
plutonium. Diversion of materials
requiring further processing, such as natural or low enriched uranium or spent
fuel, would be useful only if the diverter has these technologies. Acquisition path analysis is a key part of
designing safeguards implementation strategies.

Some of the
technical approaches under development include:

• environmental analysisthis is a very
  powerful safeguards tool, the value of which was first demonstrated in
  Iraq. Nuclear activities leave
  indicatorsminute traceson building surfaces, in plants and soil, in water,
  and in the air. Detection of such
  traces can indicate the existence of undeclared nuclear activities;
• remote surveillancethe use of video
  cameras and instruments to monitor nuclear facilities, transmitting safeguards
  data to IAEA headquarters by telephone, satellite, and potentially the
  internet;
• use of satellite imagerythough too
  expensive for covering wide areas, this can be valuable for specific
  applications, such as investigating suspect sites, confirming the operating
  status of facilities, and possibly assessing production levels of uranium
  mines.

Integrated
Safeguards

While the implementation of strengthened
safeguards is progressing, the focus has already turned to integration, that
is, how to merge classical safeguards and strengthened safeguards to give the
most effective and cost-efficient outcome.

Integration is prompted by the degree of
overlap between the old and the new safeguards measures. Certain acquisition paths have components
detectable by both classical and strengthened safeguards (e.g. diversion of
spent fuel followed by reprocessing in a clandestine reprocessing plant). There are also acquisition paths that can be
detected only by classical safeguards (e.g. diversion of separated plutonium),
and others that can be detected only by strengthened safeguards (e.g. totally
clandestine fuel cycles). Where there
is redundancy there is room for rationalisation, so that the cost-effectiveness
of safeguards can be enhanced.
Integration therefore is central to efficiency: it is about how to
prioritise safeguards resources to achieve the best results.

Integration would involve a reduction in
the classical safeguards effort in appropriate areas. The IAEA is developing criteria for integration, which will
include achieving and maintaining positive results from the Agencys various
safeguards activities. For example, if
strengthened safeguards led to confidence of the absence of a reprocessing
plant in a particular State, the intensity of classical safeguards on power
reactors and spent fuel could be reduced accordingly.

Conclusions

The greatest single challengeof critical
importance to the credibility of the safeguards systemis to effectively
address the issue of undeclared nuclear activities. This is a much less tangible goal than the verification of
declared material, and the level of assurance which can be provided will be
less certain. Obviously it is essential
to avoid the dangers of over-expectation.
Nor however should we be pessimistic about what can be achieved over
time.

How realistic is it to expect the IAEA to
be able to detect undeclared nuclear activities? The difficulties encountered in Iraq in the 1990s, where there
was a very intrusive verification regime following the Gulf War, show this is
not an easy task. On the other hand,
compared with individual States, the IAEA has considerable advantages to build
on in pursuing this task. In addition
to its expertise, the Agency will have comprehensive information bases,
extensive access rights, and increasingly sophisticated verification
methods. It is most important for the
Agencys work to be complemented through States making available information
obtained by intelligence activities and other national means. Other essential elements in the success of
this work will be the transparency of States and their willingness to cooperate
with the Agency. It can be expected
that refusal to cooperate, especially obstructing the exercise of access rights,
will be viewed very seriously by the international community.

Therefore, as the strengthened safeguards
system develops and experience is gained, it can be expected to make a major
contribution to international confidence-building. Australia will continue to be a strong supporter of this process.

[5]. The NPT formally
recognises as NWS the States that had nuclear weapons when the Treaty was
concluded in 1968, i.e. US, Russia, UK, France and China.

[6]. In addition the IAEA is
implementing Additional Protocol measures in Taiwan, China.

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