Better Utilization of In-House Resources to Enhance the IAEA's Safeguards State Evaluation Process

According to its statute, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has two missions that are carried out by its five technical departments: promoting the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and technology, and verifying that states comply with their commitments to use nuclear material and facilities only for peaceful purposes. To achieve the IAEA’s verification mission, the Department of Safeguards relies on three main streams of information: state-provided information, information from Agency Safeguards activities, and other relevant information available to it, including open sources and satellite imagery, and information from databases maintained by the Agency’s other technical departments. The paper examines the extent to which the Department of Safeguards takes advantage of information resources available in the Agency’s other technical departments – including nuclear fuel-cycle experts and information on states’ peaceful use of nuclear technologies — to carry out its responsibility to verify the completeness and correctness of states’ declarations. The paper explores ways to institutionalize the Department’s utilization of human and information resources available in other Departments of the Agency, while still meeting the Agency’s fundamental obligations to protect commercial, proprietary, and other confidential information it obtains in implementing Safeguards.