Update on the Development and Evaluation of a Program of Regional Collaboration for Non-Proliferation and Transparency

The purpose of the research is to develop and evaluate a Program of Regional Cooperation for Non-proliferation and Transparency in the Pacific Rim arena. There has been interest in the development of regional collaboration in the Pacific Rim for over thirty years, but without the kind of results that have been observed in other areas of the world, such as Europe and South America. While there have been many discussions and many papers written on the topic, there has not been a concept or a program that has been proposed and successfully implemented. This research will identify attributes of existing successful regional collaborations in other parts of the world, research the open literature for past ideas and attempts for regional collaboration in the Pacific Rim, and propose a model for a sustainable regional collaboration in the Pacific Rim. One of the strategies for developing the program of collaboration is to create a Joint Program Plan for the Implementation of Technology Based Regional Cooperation. This plan will be developed jointly by Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), with input from the US Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration/National Nuclear Security Administration (USDOE/NNSA), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other interested organizations. The plan will be a “living plan,” that will be reviewed on a yearly basis to review status, and update as necessary. Another strategy is to implement technical objectives in parallel with the development of the program plan. This would include the completion of the implementation of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) system at JNC and sharing transparency data with SNL, USDOE/NNSA, IAEA, and other interested Pacific Rim entities. The availability of commercial off-the-shelf VPN systems, a technology that allows secure, inexpensive transfer of data across the Internet, will potentially be a key ingredient in the development of a technology-based regional collaboration. Whenever two cooperating sites have VPN systems, they can discuss data content and frequency that would be useful in demonstrating regional collaboration for non-proliferation and transparency. Meanwhile, they could also send non-sensitive data from both sides to simply demonstrate the secure transmission of data.