Formalizing Acquisition Path Analysis for the IAEA’s State-Level Concept

The IAEA’s Department of Safeguards has embarked on an evolutionary process to more fully develop and apply the State-level concept for safeguards implementation. In an attempt to direct safeguards to areas of greatest proliferation risk, this concept makes use of all safeguards-relevant information available in order to focus and prior- itize its safeguards activities for a State. A key component is the development of a State-level Approach which consists of ana- lyzing acquisition paths, establishing and prioritizing technical objectives, and identi- fying applicable safeguards measures. The methodology to accomplish this is based on a three-step-approach: network modeling, network analysis, and strategic assessment. The network modeling step assesses and formalizes the State’s nuclear capabilities as well as other state-specific factors concerning relevant proliferation scenarios. The network analysis step gives a ranking of all plausible acquisition paths including a visualization of the paths. Finally, the strategic assessment evaluates the State’s pro- liferation and compliance options as well as the IAEA’s set of technical objectives and subsequent safeguards measures. In this paper, a hypothetical State model was developed in order to test the method- ology’s performance. Therefore, an Excel spreadsheet with all necessary state-level factors has been created. Afterwards, a Python software module based on graph the- oretical algorithms was applied to produce a comprehensive list of ranked acquisition paths including their visualization. The following step of the strategic evaluation is mainly based on the concept of the Nash equilibrium resulting in a stable combination of the State’s and the IAEA’s strategies. This formal and automatic procedure offers the advantage of gaining results in a comprehensive and non-discriminative manner.