Ensuring Effective Safeguards Coverage of States with Small Quantities Protocols

The majority of non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS) party to the NPT do not have significant inventories of nuclear material and have no nuclear material in a “facility” as defined in the model comprehensive safeguards agreement. In order to simplify the application of safeguards for such states, in 1974 the IAEA introduced the Small Quantities Protocol (SQP). The SQP holds in abeyance certain reporting requirements and safeguards inspections, on the understanding that the SQP will lapse if the state undertakes significant nuclear activities. As part of the program to strengthen the IAEA’s safeguards system, limits on the IAEA’s access to an SQP state were identified as a possible safeguards vulnerability – the IAEA could not readily confirm whether the state’s SQP status remained current. As a consequence, in 2006 the IAEA Board of Governors introduced a revised SQP.