Assessing the Value of Safeguards Culture

Nuclear safety and security cultures have recently come into the spotlight as an essential part to limit the risk resulting from nuclear material and associate facilities. Compared with these two cultures, however, safeguards culture has been paid less attention. The primary objective of safeguards is to prevent states from misusing nuclear material or technology. Ipso facto, under the implicit assumption that states are potential violators, states consider safeguards an uncomfortable obligation that would be hardly linked to state’s practical benefits. However, the neglect of safeguards culture could cause malfunction in deterring and detecting in a timely manner malicious insider activities involving nuclear material. On the other hand, cultivating safeguards culture could bring both tangible and intangible benefits to states. In a nascent stage, states could expect some financial advantages by reducing the intensity and frequency of inspections activities. Moreover, in an advanced stage, sustaining a robust safeguards culture would lead to helping the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to strengthen the effectiveness and improve the efficiency of the Agency safeguards. Based on this understanding, this paper is designed to assess the value of safeguards culture in tandem with nuclear security and nonproliferation. To this end, this paper revisits the objectives of safeguards culture from different perspectives. A risk analysis is followed to address possible problems that could be caused by downplaying safeguards culture at both technical and policy levels. Also, motivations and incentives to promote safeguards culture are examined by exploring different cases of emerging abolished countries respectively.