Safeguards Education and Training – Report and follow up of the 2015 INMM-ESARDA Meeting

The Institute for Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) and the European Safeguards Research and Development Association (ESARDA) have conducted a series of five joint technical meetings on safeguards since 2000. At the 2008 meeting in Tokyo, Japan, and the 2011 meeting in Aix-en-Provence, France, dedicated working group (WG) meetings on safeguards education and training were held and results and related action plans were published in dedicated safeguards conferences [1,2,3] . This paper describes the discussions and outcomes of the Education and Training working group meeting at the 2015 joint INMM ESARDA meeting at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA and will cover some of the follow-up provided since that meeting. Approximately thirty people participated in the Safeguards Education and Training Working Group (SE&TWG) meeting in Jackson Hole. Additional international participation was incorporated through a conference call with the IAEA Nuclear Safeguards Training Department and the ESARDA TKM (Training and Knowledge Management) WG members Participants included academics (from the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa), non-governmental organizations (U.S.), national laboratories (U.S., Europe), national regulatory/governmental authorities (U.S., Europe, and Asia), and former IAEA officials. To initiate open forum discussions among the working group, a number of prepared position papers were considered. These papers covered experiences in academia, the national laboratories, national regulatory authorities, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The objective of the SE&TWG was to determine and recommend means to advance the capability to provide and sustain staff who can support the global safeguards needs for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to raise the general awareness of nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation in the curricula of nuclear graduates and optional modules for other university disciplines (like legal and political sciences departments). Several key consensus points were developed among the participants during the course of the meeting. They will be covered in this paper. The working group also came out with quite a large number of recommendations, which were presented to the plenary closing session of the INMM ESARDA meeting in Jackson Hole and further elaborated in this paper. An action plan was agreed upon and this paper will cover some of the follow-up to date.