Year
2007
Abstract
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in its mission to verify safeguards declarations of NPT signatory states, applies unattended instrumentation to provide continuity of knowledge between inspection visits. With fast developing technology markets and emergence of new technologies, safeguards instrumentation needs to be modernized continuously to ensure the IAEA’s technology standard to comply with the state-of-the-art, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of safeguards approaches, and prevent possible instrumentation failures due to aging and obsoleteness of components. One IAEA project of great importance is the development of the Next Generation Surveillance System (NGSS). The IAEA’s intention is that NGSS will replace the IAEA’s current surveillance workhorse, the DCM14-technology, which was first implemented for safeguards in 1998. After ten years of reliable performance, the DCM14 is gradually reaching the end of its lifecycle with critical components disappearing from the market and more advanced components becoming commercially available. However, due to the unique requirements for safeguards instrumentation such as radiation tolerance and extremely high data security, custom-designed solutions are indispensable, with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment playing an important complementary role. In presenting the current status of the NGSS development, the following paper will discuss the achievements of the project and envisioned implementation of the user requirements. While two of four development phases have already been successfully completed, the remaining two development phases of the project will be outlined. Some comments about challenges encountered throughout the development that might affect other projects and recommended solutions will conclude the paper.