Development of Remote Monitoring Infrastructure at the IAEA

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been using remote monitoring (RM) for safeguards since 1997. In the recent past, the availability of fast broadband Internet lines have allowed for expanding the use of RM techniques. Now almost 50 unattended radiation monitoring systems and 100 surveillance systems are connected to the IAEA headquarters (HQ) or the regional offices. This has led the IAEA’s Department of Safeguards to build a new RM infrastructure including a central data centre and to establish a satellite partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA). Remote monitoring offers great advantages: allowing for a reduction of inspection frequency at key nuclear facilities, lowering inspection costs for the IAEA, and limiting intrusiveness on facilities. With this in mind, the IAEA must transfer data in a secure and reliable manner. The use of Virtual Private Network (VPN) has provided this capability, with over 70 VPN tunnels worldwide. Furthermore in geographic areas of developing terrestrial communications infrastructure, IAEA and the ESA have collaborated to develop satellite infrastructure to cover these locations. In order to ensure the reliable transfer of safeguards data, the IAEA has developed the Remote Monitoring Data Centre (RMDC). The newly established RMDC is the backbone of the data transmission network and provides field data to the inspectorate at HQ for its evaluation. “State of Health” (SoH) data is transferred and parsed every night, giving the IAEA a near real-time status of equipment operation. Lastly, the RMDC provides a place which inspectors and technicians can visit in order to check, modify, or troubleshoot their systems remotely. This paper will describe in detail how the RMDC, along with new satellite infrastructure, provides the above advantages.