Further Steps in the Development of the Safeguards System

 One way forward for IAEA safeguards would be for States with comprehensive safeguards agreements to accept arrangements which would give IAEA inspectors access to locations and data over and above that already included in the agreements. This additional access would give greater confidence in the use of declared facilities, would facilitate carrying out environmental monitoring in the States for safeguards purposes, and would permit inspections of possibly safeguards relevant sites without the need for the procedures required to implement a special inspection. The acceptance of such 'transparency' arrangements would in itself build confidence in the non-proliferation credentials of the States.

The IAEA is exploring the use of sensitive environmental monitoring techniques to detect the presence of certain types of undeclared facilities (see picture: Taking samples for safeguards environmental measurement tests in Sweden). The technical capability of such techniques to detect undeclared activities near a suspect site is generally accepted. Their applicability to the long range detection of undeclared facilities, especially those relating to uranium conversion, fabrication and enrichment, requires further development. For such techniques to be used as part of IAEA inspections under safeguards agreements in connection with the NPT, among other things these techniques have to be demonstrated to be technically feasible, as required by the provisions of such agreements.

ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS FOR SAFEGUARDS --A means to assist in the detection of undeclared nuclear activities. Such activities may give rise to the release of radionuclides or other specific indicators into the environment which can then be detected by IAEA sampling and analysis. Samples taken might include air, water, sediments, biota and wipes from surfaces

The IAEA is constantly looking for ways to minimize costs while maintaining or increasing effectiveness. The Director General's safeguards advisory group, the members of which are drawn from all over the world, has recently considered this problem. The group was unable to identify any area where immediate cost savings could be made but did identify ways that might lead to cost savings in the future. These include increased co-operation by the State's System of Accounting and Control of Nuclear Material (SSAC) with the IAEA and the application of safeguards approaches different from those in current use.

The most basic way that an SSAC can co-operate with the IAEA requires the SSAC to take practical steps to enable the IAEA to reduce the number of inspections or to carry them out with less effort, e.g. by the SSAC providing field support to inspectors and providing the IAEA with data that can be confirmed to be correct. A number of conditions have been identified which would have to apply if greater reliance were to be put on an SSAC. The IAEA is continuing to investigate practical arrangements for making greater use of SSACs while preserving the vital requirement that it must reach independent conclusions.

The IAEA is developing, assessing and determining the potential of a number of alternative safeguards approaches. For example, the successful introduction of measures aimed at detecting undeclared facilities could contribute to increased cost-effectiveness. If there were measures to provide significant confidence that no undeclared activities were in existence in a particular State, then some of the routine inspection activities at declared facilities might no longer be necessary. For example, if the IAEA had confidence that a State has no undeclared reprocessing plant, then the routine inspection activities applied to reactors and irradiated fuel could be relaxed. Safesuards in that State could be both more effective and less costly.
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