Year
2017
Abstract
The IAEA’s first model safeguards approach for gas centrifuge enrichment plants (GCEPs) was developed in the early 1980s under the Hexapartite Safeguards Project (HSP). Before the initiation of the HSP, agreement of a model approach had been delayed for over a decade by disagreements over fundamental issues between and among States and inspectorates, particularly concerning inspector access to sensitive areas of facilities. Scant literature exists, however, on the discussions that took place during the HSP. This paper sheds new light on the HSP using documents released by the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. These documents reveal that during the first year of the HSP, Treaty of Almelo signatories (the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany), and the Netherlands) faced great difficulty in reconciling their divergent positions on key HSP issues, as they attempted to form a unified tripartite position. These efforts were a source of considerable tension among the three States, and on some occasions, were made entirely in vain. By late 1981, discord was so deep that the UK and the FRG feared threats by the Dutch government to unilaterally conclude a facility attachment for the Almelo GCEP, against their own national positions. Given these dynamics, it can be argued that the tripartite enrichment project hindered the efficient development of a safeguards approach for Almelo. However, a stronger argument can be made that the intrinsic nonproliferation value of the tripartite collaboration, in combination with the limited access approach painstakingly developed through the HSP, offered greater benefit than an approach negotiated in the absence of the Netherlands’ tripartite partners. Nevertheless, academics and policymakers should be aware of how the presence of multilateral organizations can complicate the negotiation of safeguards measures at nuclear fuel cycle facilities.