Safeguarding the Military Naval Nuclear Fuel Cycle

In the safeguards agreements between non-nuclear-weaponstatemembers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty andthe International Atomic Energy Agency, there is a possibilityfor non-nuclear weapon states, acting with the approval ofthe agency’s board of governors, to remove from safeguardsnuclear materials to be used in non-proscribed military activitiessuch as naval nuclear propulsion. This possibility limitsthe power of the agency to enforce the primary goal of thesafeguards agreement, i.e., to verify that nuclear materials arenot diverted to pursue the development of nuclear weaponsor other nuclear explosive devices. Brazil will soon be the firstnon-nuclear weapons state to deploy a nuclear submarine andthe first to challenge the nonproliferation regime to verify thenon-diversion of nuclear material from a military activity. As partof a strategy to address this important issue, and after reviewingthe existing legal framework, this paper presents a model forthe application of safeguards on the naval nuclear fuel cycle ina military environment. The model could potentially be usedfor Brazil’s naval fuel cycle but also be universally applicableto other non-nuclear weapon states and potentially to nuclearweapon states.