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Annual Report 1999-2000

Implementation of Integrated Safeguards in Australia

Introduction

The preceding article outlines the program
for strengthening safeguards, which commenced in the 1990s and is ongoing. From the outset of this program, ASNO has
been closely involved with the IAEA in the development of new concepts,
procedures and techniques, including, with the cooperation of ANSTO, the conduct of field trials at Lucas Heights. In 1993 Australia had informally provided
the IAEA with extended access through an any where/any time offer. As part of the development of the Additional
Protocol concept, ASNO prepared a trial Expanded Declaration for the Agency.

Prior to the conclusion of the Additional
Protocol, the IAEA had begun carrying out strengthened safeguards measures at
Lucas Heights as allowed under the existing safeguards agreement (Part 1
measures), such as environmental sampling, and had exercised wider access at
the site pursuant to the offer mentioned above.

Conclusion of Australia's Additional Protocol

The text of the Additional Protocol was
agreed by the IAEA Board of Governors in May 1997. Australia was the first State to sign an Additional Protocol, on
23 September 1997, and was also the first to ratify the Protocol, which entered
into force on 10 December 1997.
Australia had given a very high priority to concluding the processes
necessary for ratification (including amendments to the Safeguards Act) in
order to encourage other States to do so at the earliest opportunity.

Following the ratification of the
Additional Protocol, the first practical step in the implementation of
strengthened safeguards measures was for ASNO to provide an Expanded
Declaration, a full and comprehensive declaration of all safeguards relevant
activities that had been ever conducted in Australia. The initial set of formal Protocol Declarations was sent to the
IAEA on 26 March 1998, well within the 180-day time limit set in the Protocol.

Preparation of the Expanded Declaration
(and the previous drafts) was a major and complex task, even though Australia
has only one nuclear operator, ANSTO (before 1987 the AAECAustralian Atomic
Energy Commission). ANSTO's Lucas
Heights site has been in use from the 1950s and, as to be expected with a large
nuclear research organisation, a variety of programs were conducted there,
including reactor materials research, centrifuge uranium enrichment research
from the 1960s until the early 1980s, and a large-scale program of radioisotope
production. Information was also
required on past as well as current uranium mining operations, and on all
activities that had involved nuclear material (including for non-nuclear uses). In addition information was provided on the
British nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and the Monte Bello Islands.

Implementation of strengthened safeguards

An essential part of the strengthened
safeguards process is the preparation by the IAEA of a State Evaluation. In accordance with Agency policy, Australia
has not been given access to any evaluations or supporting country files, but
understands the Agencys approach as it compiles the detailed information
required. The State Evaluation is the
subject of ongoing reviewthe initial analysis is used to identify areas
requiring further clarification, including through the conduct of safeguards
activities such as complementary access and environmental sampling, and the
results of these activities are fed back into the evaluation process.

Soon after the entry into force of
Australias Protocol, the IAEA took a further range of environmental samples at
Lucas Heights (as already mentioned, this activity had started before the
Protocol). These samples enabled the
IAEA to confirm the details of Australias expanded declaration, to raise
questions about specific activities revealed by the detailed analysis, and to
establish a baseline which is used for comparison in routine environmental
sampling campaigns.

To briefly summarise the complementary
access provisions of the Additional Protocol, the IAEA is entitled to seek
access as of right to any location on a nuclear site (i.e. in Australia's case
Lucas Heights), and any location declared to have held nuclear material, and to
certain nuclear-related locations, in order to verify that there is no
undeclared nuclear material or activities at those locations. Elsewhere the IAEA is entitled to access in
order to resolve any question or inconsistency arising from its information
analysis. The State may require that
access be carried out on a managed basis in order to protect proprietary
information, information that may be proliferation-sensitive, etc.

As at 30 June 2000 the IAEA had carried out
complementary access in Australia on eight occasions, six times at Lucas
Heights and twice elsewhere. One of the
complementary accesses at Lucas Heights was carried out on a managed access
basis.

An outline of the two complementary
accesses conducted away from Lucas Heights is as follows. One was to a location belonging to the
Defence Science and Technology Organisation in South Australia. Nuclear material (natural uranium discs) had
been used at this site at some stage in the past, for non-nuclear purposes (in
sonar research), and the IAEA asked for access to confirm that there was no
longer any nuclear material at that location.
The buildings where the nuclear material had been used were found to be
derelict, so the access was extended to other buildings at the location. Environmental samples were taken to confirm
the history of operations at the location.

The other complementary access was to the
Ranger uranium mine. The object here
was to determine that there was no undeclared uranium production. This access was particularly important as it
was the IAEAs first opportunity to trial verification activities at a uranium
minea difficult task, but one on which ASNO has been working closely with the
Agency in the development of concepts and approaches. A report of this access is in ASNO's Annual Report for 1998-99.

Since Australia's Additional Protocol was
the first to enter into effect, we are the first to have gone through two
complete annual cycles of strengthened safeguards verification and evaluation,
i.e. in 1998 and 1999. Thus Australia
is the first candidate for the introduction of integrated safeguards, and ASNO
has been in detailed discussion with the IAEA on how this might be done.

Integrated
safeguards

As discussed in the preceding article (on
page 51), the concept of integrated safeguards is that classical and
strengthened safeguards are self-reinforcing and to some extent redundant, and
that in certain circumstances it may be appropriate to recognise this through
commensurate reductions in classical safeguards effort. The IAEA has determined that the
introduction of integrated safeguards can be considered if there are positive
results from the implementation of both classical and strengthened safeguards
activities. Progress to integrated
safeguards is thus a two-stage process, the first stage being to meet the
requirements of strengthened safeguards.

Under classical safeguards the IAEAs
inspection activity for Australia is determined primarily by Australias
holdings of research reactor fuel.
Australia has large holdings of irradiated (spent) HEU (high enriched
uranium) fuelthough these holdings are being steadily reduced through
transfers to the US and France. The
Agencys current criteria require this spent fuel to be inspected four times a
year.

If Australia were to divert this material
for weapons purposes, we would need both to reprocess the fuel to
separate the HEU from fission products, and to enrich the recovered HEU
to the levels required for a nuclear weapon.
The enrichment level of currently used HIFAR fuel is 60% U-235, and the
average residual enrichment level of the spent fuel is about the same (this is
because some earlier fuel was of higher enrichmentspent fuel from the current
60% enriched fuel will have a residual enrichment of about 40%): this compares
with weapons-grade HEU, 93% U-235.

Under classical safeguards, the
timeliness requirement of three months was set on the basis that if a State
has an undeclared, operational, reprocessing plant it would take at least three
months to reprocess spent fuel and to fabricate a weapon from the recovered
material. Thus the diversion of
safeguarded material could be discovered before there was sufficient time to
manufacture a weapon. Under classical
safeguards the Agency had limited capabilities for establishing whether there
may be an undeclared facility, and therefore it had to be assumed that they might
exist. The issue for integrated safeguards
can be stated as follows: if the IAEA has been able to establish a satisfactory
level of confidence that Australia has no undeclared reprocessing facilityand
no undeclared enrichment facilityhow should this be reflected in the intensity
of routine safeguards? Does the Agency
need to continue 3-monthly inspections, or is a lesser level of effort
appropriate?

ASNO and the IAEA are currently developing
an integrated safeguards approach for Australia on a State-as-a-whole
level. It is envisaged that the
frequency of inspections at Lucas Heights could be reduced from four per year
to one full inventory verification and one unannounced (surprise) inspection.

Other aspects
being examined are:

  • use of remote monitoring of the spent
    fuel storage area and of the loading of spent fuel shipping casks;
  • use of power monitors to verify the
    power level at which HIFAR is operated.
    This relates to the possible undeclared irradiation of targets to
    produce plutonium. HIFAR is too small
    for thisgenerally production in a research reactor of a safeguards
    significant quantity (SQ8 kg) of plutonium in a year would require a very
    large reactor, more than 25 megawatts thermal power (MWt), compared with
    HIFARs level of 10 MWt. In fact, some
    years ago, as part of an international study for the IAEA on possible misuse of
    research reactors and safeguards approaches to detect this, ASNO, in
    collaboration with ANSTO and the Indonesian National Nuclear
    Energy Agency BATAN, undertook a study of HIFAR which showed that annual
    plutonium production capability was much less than one SQ, and that any such
    attempt would be readily indicated by abnormal (significantly increased) fuel
    use. Thus misuse of HIFAR is not a
    plausible scenario, but the IAEA will use HIFAR to test new safeguards
    technology;
  • further development of verification
    approaches appropriate for uranium mines.

Implications for Lucas
Heights

Strengthened and integrated safeguards will
place new requirements on nuclear operators and national safeguards authorities. In particular, for unannounced inspections
to work efficiently the operators accountancy records need to be maintained on
a real-time or near-real-time basis (what is referred to as
NRTAnear-real-time accountancy).
This is likely to require integrated site-wide computerised accountancy
systems. ASNO is working closely with
ANSTO to ensure the necessary standard is achieved.

Conclusions

Since Australia's Additional Protocol was
the first to enter into effect, we have been in a pioneering role in assisting
the IAEA to develop the procedures and methods for strengthened
safeguards. Australia has hosted the
IAEA's first complementary accesses, the first exercise of managed access under
the Protocol, and the first complementary access to a uranium mine. We are also working with the Agency in
generic areas such as information collection and analysis techniques,
criteria for the exercise of complementary access, and evaluation techniques.

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Last Updated: 24 September 2014
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