Year
2000
Abstract
The Cooperation Agreement between the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) entered into force on April 18, 1994, for a period of five years. The Agreement includes the cooperation on exchange of information, equipment, funding or personnel; exchange or loan of materials, equipment and components for evaluation and testing; joint projects for research, development, testing and evaluation of nuclear material control, accountancy, verification, and advanced containment and surveillance technologies, techniques or procedures. A Memorandum of Understanding was agreed to in 1995, for purposes of transferring U.S. Non-proliferation and Disarmament Fund (NDF) monies to ABACC, to assist in the procurement of NDA equipment, advanced containment and surveillance systems and training. Since then, three allotments were transferred to ABACC in March 1996, October 1997 and September 1999. In May 1999 the parties signed an amendment to the Agreement which extends it for an additional five-year period and foresees automatic extensions of five-year periods thereafter. This paper describes the activities carried out in the period 1997-1999 under individual projects concerning destructive and non-destructive analysis, environmental sampling, containment and surveillance, information management and training. Four new projects are under discussion, concerning databases, network and data transmission security, laboratory quality assurance, remote monitoring systems and the remote-monitoring project of the Embalse Nuclear Power Station. The technical cooperation between ABACC and DOE substantially contributed to improvements in ABACC’s measurement methods, equipment and inspection procedures. This is reflected in the increasing effectiveness of the safeguards applied under the Common System of Accounting for and Control of Nuclear Material established by the Bilateral Agreement between Argentina and Brazil, and in the enhanced coordination with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the application of the Quadripartite Safeguards Agreement – INFCIRC/435.