Advanced Safeguards Systems Development within the Consortium for Verification Technology

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty introduced safeguards for nuclear facilities, and tasked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with the complex job of monitoring nuclear activities, with an initial emphasis on declared facilities. The IAEA needs more integrated and more robust nuclear safeguards instruments and methods. Whereas the monitoring of declared nuclear facilities has allowed states to prove their treaty compliance, it does not address the possibility of nuclear activities at undeclared sites. Detection of suspicious activity at such undeclared facilities, and subjecting them to inspection, poses new challenges that require new instruments and methods to verify that each party is meeting its disarmament and nonproliferation obligations. To this end, the Consortium for Verification Technology is developing advanced safeguards tools, such multiplicity counters, imaging arrays, and advanced pulse shape analysis techniques, as well as standoff measurement techniques for limited access areas. In the paper, we will present experimental results demonstrating the promise of these technologies to the international safeguards mission.