IAEA & NPT - The Verification Challenge

Challenging Nuclear Issues Point the Way Forward

« Previous | Next »

by Jan Lodding & Tariq Rauf

Page 4 of 4

Learning from Experience

The IAEA has extensive experience in verifying nuclear programmes. Recent developments have put its strengthened safeguards system to the test and brought a number of highly topical issues to the forefront:

The Impact of the Additional Protocol.

The Model Additional Protocol constitutes the centerpiece of the IAEA's response to the 1991 Iraq crisis, aiming to strengthen the effectiveness and improve the efficiency of the safeguards system as a contribution to global non-proliferation objectives. It is designed to provide additional verification authority needed to derive credible assurance of the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities. Once such conclusions are reached for a State with significant nuclear activities, the implementation of integrated safeguards approaches may lead to a reduction of inspection frequency and savings in the cost of verification for both the State and the Agency. At the time of the 2000 NPT Review Conference, only nine countries had additional protocols under implementation, and the system was virtually untested.

The case of the Republic of Korea suggests that the implementation of the measures in the additional protocol could lead to the discovery of previously unreported nuclear activities involving small quantities of nuclear material in other States.

The combined application of the measures of CSAs and additional protocols provides the technical basis on which the IAEA can draw expanded conclusions about a State's nuclear material and activities. For the year 2003, on the basis of its verification activities and evaluations, the Agency concluded, with regard to 19 NPT States with CSAs, that all nuclear material had been placed under safeguards and remained in peaceful nuclear activities or was otherwise adequately accounted for. Such conclusions contribute to the strengthening of the NPT by building confidence that participating States are complying fully with their treaty obligations. The IAEA has emphasized that additional protocols are a sine non qua for effective verification and that they must become the standard for all NPT States to enable the Agency to fulfill its verification responsibilities in a credible manner. By the end of 2004, 62 States had additional protocols in force.

The legal authority provided by the additional protocols also plays a vital role in the implementation of safeguards in Iran and Libya, where such protocols are applied pending entry into force, and in the Republic of Korea, which provided outstanding information on past research in connection with its initial additional protocol declarations. The case of the Republic of Korea suggests that the implementation of the measures in the additional protocol could lead to the discovery of previously unreported nuclear activities involving small quantities of nuclear material in other States, which might in some cases need to be reported to the IAEA Board of Governors.

Although integrated safeguards approaches are being implemented in a few States with nuclear activities, the IAEA's experience in States with complex nuclear programmes remains limited. The first case of integrated safeguards implementation in such a country, Japan, began in September 2004.

Covert Nuclear Trade.

A major new development has been the discovery - in connection with IAEA safeguards implementation in Iran and Libya - that some States had been turning to nuclear supply networks in order to construct facilities capable of producing nuclear material. This cast in doubt the effectiveness of States' export control systems and of cooperative arrangements of supplier state governments to control transfers of nuclear items. It further precipitated the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which calls for strengthened national export controls related to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) material.

The IAEA, as part of its verification work in Libya and Iran, is investigating, with the support of Member States, the supply routes and the sources of sensitive nuclear technology and related equipment and nuclear and non-nuclear materials. It has discovered that the covert networks comprise dozens of companies in more than 30 countries around the world, whereby actual technological know-how may originate from one source, while the delivery of equipment may take place through intermediaries that play a coordinating role, subcontracting the manufacturing to entities in yet other countries. Sometimes, the original supplier might not know the actual end use, while in other cases the identity of equipment such as serial numbers are removed indicating complicity by the supplier.

A major new development has been the discovery that some States had been turning to a covert nuclear supply network in order to construct facilities capable of producing nuclear material.

The IAEA will continue to work with Libya and other Member States to gain a better understanding of the workings of the covert nuclear trade networks, with a view to ensuring that sensitive nuclear technologies and equipment have not proliferated further.

Enrichment and Reprocessing.

The IAEA's verification experience has brought to the forefront the special difficulties surrounding technologies for enrichment and reprocessing. The Director General has called the acquisition of capabilities covering the full nuclear fuel cycle tantamount to a latent nuclear weapons programme. In its introductory statement to the 3rd session of the Preparatory Committee to the 2005 NPT Review Conference, the IAEA referred to the wide dissemination of the most proliferation-sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle as the "Achilles heel" of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The DPRK's attempts to "break out" from the NPT regime after having acquired reprocessing capabilities illustrate the problem.

In view of the sensitive, dual-use nature of technologies for enrichment and reprocessing, it would contribute to peaceful trade and confidence-building if States could agree freely on multilateral approaches to limit the proliferation of such technologies. In October 2004, IAEA Director General ElBaradei appointed an expert group to help the international consideration of multilateral approaches to the sensitive front- and back ends of the nuclear fuel cycle and to report by March 2005, in the hope that the NPT Review Conference in May 2005 might be in a position to make progress on that issue.

The Way Forward

When NPT States meet in May 2005 to review and assess the way forward, they will have to address a number of difficult verification matters. They include the attempt of one NPT State to break out from its safeguards obligations, breaches of safeguards agreements by several NPT States, a lack of progress on verification of excess nuclear material, the discovery of covert nuclear trade networks and the special difficulties associated with the dissemination of enrichment and reprocessing technologies.

Some of these issues will require that States address the delicate balance between different provisions of the NPT, and test their political will to make concessions and find compromises in the common interest of strengthening the Treaty. One of the most important measures before NPT States will be to strengthen verification pursuant to Article III by confirming the role of the IAEA Model Additional Protocol as the NPT verification standard.

The IAEA, for its part, will continue to fulfill its mandate of providing credible assurance to the international community that States are honouring their non-proliferation undertakings, on the basis of the legal authority imparted through IAEA safeguards agreements and additional protocols. The effectiveness and efficiency of the strengthened safeguards system will surely continue to be put to the test, as the IAEA meets new verification challenges in the coming years.

Tariq Rauf heads the Verification and Security Policy Coordination Section of the Agency's Office of External Relations and Policy Coordination and Jan Lodding is a Senior Policy Officer in the same Section. E-mails: t.rauf@iaea.org; j.lodding@iaea.org.

More information on the IAEA and the NPT and on specific verification issues is available on www.iaea.org.

For more information on the situation with regard to Iran, please refer to www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml.

« Previous | Next »

Page 4 of 4