INTEGRATED SAFEGUARDS - PROGRESS AND ISSUES

As the program to strengthen safeguards gathers pace, the concept of integrated safeguards is assuming increasing importance. With the Additional Protocol (AP) entering into widespread application, strengthened safeguards—the combination of a comprehensive safeguards agreement and the AP—are becoming firmly established as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards norm. Integrated safeguards takes this process further. Rather than being determined mechanistically, by number of facilities and quantities of material, safeguards effort can be rationalised so as to focus on areas of greatest proliferation significance. At the time of writing (early April 2004), Additional Protocols have already been ratified or signed by threequarters of states with comprehensive safeguards agreements that have significant nuclear activities. When the EU members ratify their APs—expected shortly—over 70% of all nuclear facilities under comprehensive safeguards will be in states with APs in force. Most AP states can be expected to qualify for integrated safeguards (IS)—IS should be in widespread application within the next 2-3 years. To date most of the development of IS has been in the conceptual framework, and in facility-level approaches that take advantage of redundancies between “traditional” and strengthened safeguards to reduce routine safeguards effort. The outcome is a substantial improvement in cost-effectiveness, but currently it still resembles the “one-size-fits-all” approach of traditional safeguards. The next major phase is the development of genuinely state-level safeguards approaches, based on the characteristics of each state. This paper discusses some of the major issues involved, including: - developing an appropriate methodology for tailoring safeguards effort to individual states; - whether the current “threshold” assumption, that states of proliferation concern are unlikely to qualify for IS, is soundly-based—and what to do if this is not the case; - ensuring that IS are sufficiently robust to deal effectively with changing circumstances; - implications for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).