USE OF REMOTE MONITORING IN SAFEGUARDS IMPLEMENTATION IN THE NIS

During the past several years, the Agency has gone through a comprehensive program of implementing safeguards at nuclear facilities in the Newly Independent States (NIS). Some facilities contain highly sensitive nuclear material and require frequent inspections by the Agency to maintain continuity of knowledge on the nuclear material. The facilities are equipped with containment and surveillance (C/S) devices, which have to be serviced, and the collected information has to be reviewed within the timeliness period. The C/S devices include cameras, electronic seals, and motion sensors for selected key areas. To reduce the inspection effort and expenses, safeguards approaches based on the application of Remote Monitoring (RM) have been developed. The required equipment has been installed at selected facilities in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. As there was no reliable terrestrial data transmission network available, a satellite link has been installed to implement the RM. The technology uses the Globalis-B terminal, which provides high-speed data transmission through Inmarsat satellites from the facilities to the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria. The paper describes the applied C/S systems combined with the RM equipment as well as the results from the RM system testing and future perspectives.