Integrated Safeguards: Expectations and Realities

The IAEA’s safeguards system is a fundamental pillar of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The existence of credible international safeguards is more important today than ever. In essence, international safeguards constitute a system of confidence building. This concept indicates that the system must be based on international cooperation and it must stand on technical independent competence, expert judgment, and a nondiscriminatory basis, and it must be widely endorsed by the international community. In recent years, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in cooperation with its member states, has significantly progressed in designing and implementing integrated safeguards (IS). A and technologies has already been established and the IAEA is giving priority to the completion of IS approaches for generic facility types and at the state level. There is a broad range of views and expectations of what IS should be. In general, it is recognized that IS provides a unique opportunity to design at the state level a strengthened and more efficient safeguards system. It is also recognized that IS allows for the greatest degree of adaptation and reduction of traditional safeguards measures and that safeguards implementation and evaluation should be less prescriptive and rigid in comparison to today’s approach. Another important aspect of IS is the role of review and evaluation by the IAEA of all relevant information in drawing safeguards conclusions. The existence of a well-understood, transparent, and objective methodology to perform this activity is of fundamental importance to maintain the credibility of the verification system. The introduction of modern technologies coupled with the intensification of the use of short notice, unannounced inspections, randomization, and unpredictability together with the increasing cooperation between the IAEA and the State Systems of Accounting and Control or Regional Systems of Accounting and Control of nuclear materials (SSAC or RSAC) are important elements of this new safeguards system. This paper discusses a number of issues and expectations surrounding IS, in particular the analysis of the current state of the development of IS, the expectations of what IS should be, and the challenges that still need to be addressed. Conceptual Framework to combine safeguards measures