Year
2007
Abstract
For well over a decade, there has been an outpouring of assistance by many countries to many countries desiring to improve the effectiveness of physical protection of the nuclear material and nuclear facilities within their borders or otherwise subject to their jurisdiction. Accompanying the upgrades of physical protection at individual facilities and operations have been efforts to improve sustainability of the upgrades through the building of an indigenous national capability to design, implement, maintain and operate adequate and effective physical protection systems. As someone who participated in the multi-year negotiation of the 2005 Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) and who is now working on the development of recommendations and guidance for implementing those and other international instruments in the post-September 11 threat environment, I would like to discuss the contribution that a legal, regulatory and institutional infrastructure at the national level appropriate to nuclear material and nuclear facilities under the country's jurisdiction can make to achieving adequate and effective physical protection at the facility and activity levels. The starting point for my discussion will be the infrastructural elements identified in the 2005 Amendment and in other international legal instruments relevant to the physical protection of nuclear material and nuclear facilities. Particular emphasis will be placed on the importance of creating, maintaining and integrating key relationships among the infrastructural components and functions as part of sustaining effective and adequate physical protection at the facility and activity levels. Among other things, an appropriate infrastructure and establishing and maintaining key relationships will contribute to the \"buy-in\" needed at multiple levels and in multiple sectors of society.