IAEA Inspections for Undeclared and Declared Activities: Is a More Robust Approach Needed?

The United States has long supported a strong international safeguards system and for many years has served as the foremost supplier of technology, equipment, and training to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In doing so, it drew in many instances on DOE sponsored R&D and training that was directed towards domestic safeguards and then adapted for IAEA purposes. This was relatively straightforward because of the strong overlap between the development of nuclear material accountancy measures needed for both domestic and international purposes. Three factors have emerged that have made this strong reliance on domestic measures less and less able to be a source of support for the IAEA. One is the shift by the IAEA safeguards system towards detecting undeclared activities. The second is the shift of domestic attention away from nuclear material accountancy and towards physical protection. As a result, a gap in US sponsored R&D and training relevant to international safeguards has developed. The NNSA Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) and the DOE NA-22 Safeguards R&D program are intended to help fill this gap and, thereby, permit the U.S. to remain as the pre-eminent supplier of technology for international safeguards purposes. A third important factor is the reduction in nuclear fuel cycle facilities and capabilities at the USDOE National Labs, which has made it more difficult to provide training opportunities or assist with technology development in these areas. However, the reasons for this reduction are complex and deep seated, and there is no ready means to reverse this trend. In this context, IAEA challenges have been examined from the perspective of detecting the diversion of nuclear material from declared stocks; detecting undeclared production of nuclear material and activities at locations declared under INFCIRC/153; and detecting undeclared nuclear material and activities elsewhere in a state. Of these, the detection of undeclared nuclear material and activities is, perhaps, the IAEA’s most significant challenge. It is a challenge that even the international community finds difficult to meet because of the scope and the geographic scale of the problem, the technical constraints, the knowledge required, and the significant resources needed to deploy effective systems world-wide (e.g., satellite surveillance systems). The IAEA’s success in carrying out this mission hinges on its capability to evaluate the declarations made by the state for completeness, correctness, and consistency in order to detect possible indications of undeclared nuclear material and activities. Three elements go into this evaluation: (1) evaluating the internal consistency of a State’s declaration and comparing it to information gathered by IAEA inspectors on the basis of their access to the locations, facilities, sites, personnel, and documents disclosed in the state’s declarations; (2) comparison of States’ declarations with other information available to the IAEA, including the information it gathers from its review of open sources, including scientific and technical literature and data bases, trade journals, and media reports; and (3) its ability to archive, retrieve, organize, and analyze all available information for indications of potential undeclared nuclear material and activities, and, when warranted, to request states to provide further information and access in order to investigate and clarify any questions or inconsistencies. In the past, there has been a strong tendency to consider the IAEA activities in the field and IAEA activities at Headquarters as two different domains. This may have been adequate in the context of detecting diversion from declared stocks in low throughput, low complexity facilities. However, the focus on detecting undeclared nuclear material and activities and diversion from high throughput complex facilities places a higher emphasis on the ability of inspectors in the field to make informed decisions on the spot about whether indicators of such activities exist, and, if so, how to investigate them. Such informed decision-making is even more critical when conducting investigations such as those the IAEA has pursued in recent years in Iran and Syria. Increased emphasis is called for on linking the inspector in the field in real-time with headquarters. The credibility and timeliness of the IAEA’s results can be improved by improving communications between the inspectors in the field and headquarters in a way that would permit analysis of inspector observations through real-time expert advice on all nuclear fuel cycle related and weaponization indicators, and focused feedback on next steps. Of course, there is also be great value in the deployment of new technologies focused on detecting undeclared nuclear material and activities, but the deployment of such new tools will be benefited by such feedback..