INTEGRATING LINKS
With the IAEA Board of Governors' approval of the Additional Protocol to safeguards agreements in May 1997, an extensive three and one-half year development programme (called "Programme 93+2") for strengthened and more efficient safeguards came to conclusion. Programme 93+2 has been a major effort by the IAEA Secretariat and included the direct involvement of the Standing Advisory Group on Safe Ultimately the strength of the safeguards system depends upon three interrelated elements:
- the extent to which the IAEA is aware of the nature and locations
of States' nuclear and nuclear-related activities;
- the extent to which IAEA inspectors have physical access to relevant
locations for the purpose of providing independent verification
of the exclusively peaceful intent of a State's nuclear programme;
- the will of the international community, through IAEA access to the United Nations Security Council, to take action against States that are not complying with their non-proliferation commitments.
Since 1991, IAEA access to the Security Council has been re-affirmed and the IAEA Board of Governors has approved a number of specific measures that greatly increase IAEA access to information and to locations. Some of the new measures are being implemented under existing safeguards agreements. Other measures requiring new legal authority now are provided for in the Additional Protocol approved by the Board of Governors in May 1997.
NEW VANTAGE POINT
Traditional material accountancy safeguards has developed through the definition of observables/indicators of diversion or of circumstances where the possibility of diversion cannot be excluded. These indicators are constantly tested against a State's declarations of nuclear material inventories, flows and facility operations. Strengthened safeguards provides for a new kind of "observational vantage point" comprised of State declarations regarding nuclear and nuclear-related activities that constitute the whole of their nuclear programme and the utilization of nuclear material, increased inspector access, new technical measures and broadly based analysis of information. An important development in this regard is the so-called "Physical Model".
Nuclear material suitable for the manufacture of weapons does not exist in nature. It must be manufactured from source material through a series of discrete and definable steps (i.e., mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, irradiation, reprocessing). Each step can be accomplished through any one of several processes where the choice of the process for a given step depends, to some extent, upon the processes chosen for both the preceding and succeeding steps. The Physical Model, is an attempt to identify, describe and characterize every known process for carrying out each step necessary for the production of weapons-usable material. Thus, any possible route from source material to special fissionable materials is describable as some combination of processes identified and characterized in the Physical Model. Each process for carrying out a given step is described and then characterized in terms of indicators of the existence of that process. The indicators of the existence of a process may be specialized and dual-use equipment, nuclear and non-nuclear materials, environmental signatures, requirements for specific technical skills and so on. The model was the combined work of Department staff and a small group of experts from Member States. It will always be a work-in-progress subject to periodic review and update. However, a form of closure was achieved recently with a Consultants' Meeting where each component was subjected to a detailed review by additional experts from ten Member States.
Just as the overall technical objective of traditional safeguards translates to the testing of the hypothesis of "no diversion", the objective of strengthened safeguards is met through a country-level evaluation taken to be the testing of the hypothesis that "there are no undeclared nuclear activities". It is a detailed technical evaluation of first the internal consistency of the State's declaration and secondly, a point-by-point comparison between indications of activities from all information available to the Agency and what the State says they are doing or plans to do.
The process of information evaluation and the inspection process are inextricably linked: many of the sub-hypotheses (or questions) regarding the absence of nuclear activities (including facility misuse) are, or only can be, tested through direct observation. Some hypotheses to be tested through direct observation are by design, others arise through the need to resolve inconsistencies between information collected by the Agency and a State's declaration. Information is relevant to this technical evaluation only to the extent that it indicates, directly or indirectly, the existence of a nuclear activity or the presence of nuclear material. The conclusion that there are no undeclared nuclear activities can only be inferred from the absence of any evidence to the contrary. This absence does not prove that there are no undeclared nuclear activities. It says that from all information available none has been observed and, in the absence of such observation, there is no reason to reject the hypothesis that "there are no undeclared nuclear activities".
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