General Technical Requirements (GTR) for Inventory Monitoring Systems (IMS) for the Trilateral Initiative

Pursuant to the Trilateral Initiative, the three parties (The Russian Federation, the United States, and the International Atomic Energy Agency) have been engaged in discussions concerning the structure of reliable monitoring systems for storage facilities having large inventories. The intent of these monitoring systems is to provide the capability for the IAEA to maintain continuity of knowledge in a sufficiently reliable manner that should there be equipment failure, loss of continuity of knowledge would be restricted to a small population of the inventory, and thus reinventory of the stored items would be minimized. These facility-specific monitoring systems, referred to as Inventory Monitoring Systems (IMS) are to provide the principal means for the IAEA to assure that the containers of fissile material remain accounted under the Verification Agreements which are to be concluded between the IAEA and the Russian Federation and the IAEA and the United States for the verification of weapon-origin and other fissile material specified by each State as released from its defense programs. A technical experts working group for inventory monitoring systems has been meeting since February of 2000 to formulate General Technical Requirements (GTR) for Inventory Monitoring Systems for the Trilateral Initiative. Although provisional agreement has been reached by the three parties concerning the GTR, it is considered a living document that can be updated as warranted by the three parties. This paper provides a summary of the GTR as it currently exists.