COMMERCIAL SATELLITE DATA AS A SUPPORT TO THE ADDITIONAL PROTOCOL DECLARATIONS

The new optical satellites operating today have opened up a new area for monitoring and surveillance. The Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, SKI, together with Metria Miljöanalys (part of the National Land Survey of Sweden) is currently conducting a project with the objectives to show how commercial satellite data can be used for safeguard purposes both at SKI and at the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA. This project has provided SKI with digitized maps and commercial satellite data to verify site descriptions provided by two of the nuclear operators in Sweden. Those digital data will also be included in the declarations given to IAEA. The goal with the project is to show a practical and efficient approach in using satellite data for monitoring changes of nuclear sites over long time periods and to enhance the quality of the Swedish declarations. The remote sensing technology gives an opportunity to discover and confirm potentially undeclared activities even in areas not possible to visit. It also gives an opportunity to follow site under construction over time, and in detail to map the development as new buildings and constructions occur. Using satellite images, as a complement to auxiliary data ought to give economical benefits such as more effective work, unlimited access to image information and an enhanced knowledge of the history of different sites. The study has shown that: • satellite images of 1m resolution give relevant additional information for the monitoring of nuclear sites, especially in areas of low access, • change detection using manual interpretation and ‘historical’ satellite images is an efficient method to follow nuclear site developments, • the use of an image and vector system (i.e. ArcView) in combination with the continuos update of a site database could be one way of handle the Additional Protocol Declarations.