KNOWLEDGE- AND SKILL-BASED INSTRUCTION FOR IAEA SAFEGUARDS INSPECTORS

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is implementing new safeguards regimes in response to the challenges it expects to face over the next twenty years. These challenges include a dramatic increase in the amount of nuclear material and number of facilities under safeguards and the threat to the world posed by covert nuclear suppliers groups and other non-state actors. In its 20/20 Vision for the Future document published in 2008, the IAEA assumes that its safeguards responsibilities will grow more quickly than will the size of its staff.1 The IAEA must therefore work more efficiently without sacrificing effectiveness. The implementation of information-based safeguards and drawing safeguards conclusions on a State-level are key to the IAEA meeting its obligation of providing the international community the assurance that declared nuclear material remains in peaceful uses and that States have no undeclared nuclear materials or activities. In order to implement information-drive safeguards, IAEA inspectors must possess the skills of an analyst and a nuclear forensics detective in addition to those of a nuclear material accountancy inspector. Consequently, the IAEA must strengthen its training programs to provide inspectors the analytical knowledge, skill, and abilities they will need to implement information-driven safeguards.2 This paper focuses the fundamental change in IAEA inspector job requirements and evaluates new training tools and methodologies that could be used to provide the IAEA staff with the knowledge, skill, and abilities necessary to perform their inspection tasks. The new training approach will provide for safeguards declarative knowledge mastery and simulated task training for individual and team training. The training technology detailed in this paper employs an artificial intelligence tutor embedded in simulation software that monitors and assesses trainee performance and that allows trainees to practice their skills in a risk-free environment. The simulation can model real-world conditions so that inspectors can quickly gain the skill and judgment that they require in a shorter period of time than they would by on-job-training only. The training approach is flexible, provides for incorporating new developments in safeguards regimes, and could be used to provide both initial and continuing training and assessment.