Recent JRC achievements and future challenges in verification for nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation.

R&D in nuclear safeguards, non-proliferation and nuclear security is a corner stone of the Joint Research Centre Nuclear Safety and Security Work Program. The main stakeholders are the Euratom safeguards authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency and close contact is maintained with the nuclear facility plant operators. More recent customers include e.g. authorities dealing with trade of sensitive goods and those dealing with nuclear security measures. This paper illustrates a number of the latest JRC safeguards and non-proliferation related developments, describing the rationale for the R&D, the recent achievements, the continuing challenges and the outlook for deployment in future nuclear fuel cycle facilities and activities. With respect to the nuclear materials verification, examples of recent developments focus on the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle, high level quality systems and quality control tools for the measurements in enrichment and reprocessing facilities and the fuel cycle back end. At the facility level, continued emphasis is put on enhanced process monitoring and modeling of material flows, advanced sealing and surveillance techniques and unattended and remotely operated systems. Both inside and outside the facility, environmental sampling and other verification methods (e.g. laser based methods and satellite imagery) continue to pose challenges. With respect to the overall evaluation and/or verification of state activities and capabilities, open-source analysis, mainly focusing on trade of sensitive technologies, proves to provide significant potential. Finally at the conceptual level, the activities of safeguards by design and assessment of proliferation resistance of future nuclear fuel cycles allow to both assess and integrate the developments previously referred to. The paradigm of nuclear safety, security and safeguards is also shortly touched upon in this paper.