TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS OF EURATOM SAFEGUARDS

Euratom Safeguards is implemented on the basis of the Euratom Treaty by a dedicated Directorate in the Directorate General for Energy of the European Commission. Euratom Safeguards, the largest Regional Safeguards System worldwide, is supporting the implementation of the Non-proliferation Treaty in all Member States of the European Union (EU) including nuclear material control in the civil fuel cycle of the nuclear weapons states members of the EU. As such Euratom Safeguards has significant Research and Development (R&D) needs which are covered by dedicated projects. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has a mandate based on the Euratom Treaty to support Euratom Safeguards. The close cooperation between Euratom Safeguards and the JRC provides the foundation of the technology base of nuclear material control in the European Union. Beyond that, individual projects are frequently run in cooperation with suitable partners in EU member states or in the framework of cooperation agreements with partners like the US Department of Energy and others. Results of these projects are regularly made available for wider use in the global safeguards community in general and particularly to the IAEA. This paper will provide a current overview of such Research and Development projects and include examples from various domains like measurement systems (attended and unattended, destructive and non-destructive), containment and surveillance systems, automatically controlled data acquisition, data evaluation and even more administrative tools like the data handling applications Euratom Seals Analysis and Management (ESAM) and Verification of Accountancy Records of Operators (VARO). Finally, we present some current safeguards implementation challenges and highlight and discuss ideas on how to address them. This paper contributes to the INMM special session on IAEA Support Programmes because it describes how R&D performed within the European Commission and through joint collaboration with bilateral partners can aid strengthening the international safeguards regime.