Future of Verification Activities in the IAEA

The verification activities in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have begun with safeguards implementation based on the IAEA’s project agreements. By establishment of a model safeguards agreement required by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1971 and by its implementation in the form of IAEA-State safeguards agreement, the IAEA verification activities had an important evolution. Although small part of activities is devoted to the safeguards implementation in the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) which required by entry into force of voluntary bilateral agreements between IAEA and five NWS’s, most efforts of the IAEA verification activities are addressed to safeguarding civil use of nuclear energy in the Non-Nuclear Weapon States ( NNWS). The end of Cold-War and necessity of adequate control and disposition of nuclear material which is no more needed for defense purposes activated the Agency’s verification activities in the NWS. IAEA is now monitoring Pu and HEU in the several storage sites in the USA, and the discussions are going on how to effectively safeguards once-defense-use Pu, which will be stored in the hardened storage facility in Russian Federation. Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) is expected to be one of the most important global nuclear disarmament - non-proliferation regime in the future. IAEA is supposed to be the verification organization required by FMCT. So, future verification activities of the IAEA will encompass both in the NNWSs and in the NWSs. IAEA has been problemed by the lack of financial resources. It is not so optimistic to be also to increase contributions from Member States. Therefore, the author proposes several measures to improve the balance of supply / demand of the IAEA resources problems in the paper, which are summarized as follows : (1) approaches for the NPT safeguards implementation for NNWS and FMCT and other verification activities for NWS should be reviewed and the effort harmonizing these two approaches should be intensified, (2) delegation of some activities to other entities (possibly RSAC, SSAC or the other regional body) should be seriously considered, and (3) more innovative strategy (e.g. inclusion of non-technical parameters) should be discussed by the experts, including political, economic, and legal professionals.