Improvement of National Inspection Regime for Enhanced Cooperation Between the ROK and the IAEA

The IAEA safeguards has experienced various changes since its start, and the IAEA is still trying to continuously improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the safeguards. Although the recent discussion about the state level concept in the IAEA BOG (Board of Governors) has been delayed because of differences in opinion among the member states, the development of the state level approach considering the characteristics of each country’s fuel cycle is going on. During the evolution of the IAEA safeguards from the CSA (Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements), AP (Additional Protocol), and SLC (State Level Concept) up to now, the state has also been required to expand to support the IAEA’s verification activities. The ROK has signed the Enhanced Cooperation Arrangement with the IAEA on the level of Partnership, and expects some expansion of its roles for IAEA safeguards. The ROK has performed independent national inspections since 1997 based on the domestic law, and accumulated lots of inspection experiences and developed various verification capabilities. It can be considered that the ROK’s achievements might be useful for providing more efficiency in IAEA safeguards, but it is required that clear definition of objectives and roles of national inspection should be established before the implementation of EC (Enhanced Cooperation) programs. In this paper, the works for improving the ROK national inspection regime and defining the role of national inspection are introduced according to the following 5 categories: 1) Support for IAEA verification activity, 2) Transparency in nuclear material accountancy, 3) The role of facility operator, 4) Collection of safeguards related information, 5) ROK-IAEA Enhanced Cooperation program.