The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Illicit Trafficking Database System (ITDB): What It Is, What It Isn’t, and What Can Be Learned From It

Is there more or less illicit trafficking of nuclear material and other radioactive material than in past years? Does the information collected by the IAEA’s ITDB System show that nuclear security is better or worse? These are important questions to ask and answer. However, given the limitations of the ITDB, or any data collection system for illicit trafficking events, can these questions be answered, and, if so, how good the answers? If the answers are not good enough, or non-existent, are there improvements that can be made to the ITDB system to allow us to answer the questions, or are some of the questions truly just not answerable? This paper examines these issues by considering the ITDB system as it exists today, its current strengths and weaknesses, and then considers what can be learned from the data collected by the ITDB to date. The questions posed above are examined under various scenarios, including an ideal information collection system, to determine what the limits of analysis are. Finally, we consider what can be learned about nuclear security from the ITDB data