The Impact of Advanced Technologies on the Efficiencies of Safeguards and Facility Operations

Following Japan’s conclusion of the Additional Protocol in 1999 and the IAEA’s broader conclusion in 2004 regarding the peaceful nature of Japan’s nuclear activities, the Japan government and facility operators have worked with the IAEA to apply integrated safeguards in Japan’s nuclear facilities to increase safeguards efficiency, and to ensure correctness and completeness of Japanese declarations. Integrated safeguards approaches rely heavily on the implementation of advanced technologies such as unattended surveillance and non-destructive assay measurement, automated nuclear material accounting, solution monitoring and remote monitoring. These technologies have considerably enabled some integrated safeguards approaches, especially for random interim inspections; they have also reduced the level of human effort required for nuclear material accounting and inspection activities, and have effectively extended the “reach” of the inspector to less accessible areas. While integrated safeguards at some facilities have been accomplished rather handily, the experiences for implementing integrated safeguards at, for example, Pu handling facilities have required considerable effort to elaborate the safeguards approach and practicable inspection procedure to achieve both an effective and efficient safeguards framework in the context of the timeliness requirements of Pu, difficulty of accessing material for measurements, and the complexity of operations, which involve many process steps and material transfers. Also, the increased use of advanced systems for both operations and inspections correlates directly with the costs of providing, using and maintaining them. A more comprehensive understanding of the impact of advanced technologies on operation and inspection processes is useful for developing methodologies to support better system design and evaluation of existing systems. To sustain verification and facility operations under mostly flat budgets, it is important to regularly assess system efficiency and seek opportunities for improvement.