Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Role in Implementing the Additional Protocol to the U.S. - IAEA Safeguards Agreement

The declaration and access provisions of the Additional Protocol expand the scope of impacted industry under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards Agreement to include upstream and downstream nuclear fuel-cycle activities. Although the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) does not have an implementation role in traditional safeguards under the U.S.-IAEA Safeguards Agreement, BIS will have a lead role in implementing the Additional Protocol (AP). BIS will share the regulatory purview for commercial industry with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). BIS will issue AP regulations, which will oversee the implementation for commercial entities not licensed by the NRC, to include companies engaged in equipment manufacturing, mining and fuelcycle related research and development. This presentation will provide an overview of the types of activities that will be subject to declaration, as well as to which U.S. Government agency companies will be expected to submit information. Those commercial entities subject to BIS’s AP regulations will submit declarations in hard copy via U.S. mail or electronically via the Internet through Web-AP. BIS will then aggregate these declarations with those declarations received from the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to create the official United States declaration that will be transmitted to the IAEA. BIS has a successful history of working with the chemical industry in implementing the only other international arms control treaty directly affecting U.S. commercial activities, the Chemical Weapons Convention. BIS will apply its core principles and methodologies for protecting confidential information and minimizing the burden to industry while demonstrating industry compliance with the Additional Protocol.