Year
1994
Abstract
The international auditing of nuclear materials accounts creates a need for internationally accepted quantification of the performances associated with auditing measurements. Reliable knowledge of measurement precision and accuracy is necessary not only for data evaluation in auditing, but also for planning auditing strategies. There is another element that makes the quality control and the quantitative assessment of performances so important. This is that any Safeguard and Verification -agreements require or will require that \"... the system of measurement ... shall either conform or be equivalent to the latest standards\", in order to ensure that the accountancy and verification records used for drawing Safeguards conclusions are of a high and accepted quality. Thus internationally agreed performance values are an important component of technical improvement and of measurement assurance. They are therefore an invaluable element of Safeguards transparency. The paper discusses modelling and model testing, the role of specialised performance laboratories, together with the importance of international round robins and performance evaluation experiments, designed around wellcharacterized, traceable reference materials. The role of international organizations (e.g. ESARDA) and regulatory bodies for reinforcing existing quantitative tools and statistical standards is discussed. Their technical role in widening the field of accepted quantitative definitions, exploring new logic tools and new decision making approaches, made available by modern research, is also discussed.