Year
2000
Abstract
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a United Nations organization that has the responsibility to monitor nuclear facilities throughout the world and detect the diversion of significant quantities of nuclear material from peaceful uses to undeclared activities. Remote monitoring uses technology to view and monitor what is happening at a nuclear facility. The data that is collected can then be viewed by the IAEA inspectors when they visit the facility later or can be transmitted to another location for viewing. Remote monitoring includes video cameras and sensors that measure such things as motion and radiation. Remote monitoring offers the advantages of potentially being able to reduce IAEA inspection costs, provides coverage of the facility when IAEA inspectors would not normally be at the site, and reduces the cost and intrusiveness of IAEA inspection on the plant operator. New Integrated Review Software is under development to digest the enormous quantities of data and filter out the information that is key to the safeguards objectives. Remote monitoring has been implemented at facilities worldwide, including the Embalse Nuclear Power Station in Argentina, facilities in Japan and Canada, and will potentially be used at Lucas Heights in Australia and the Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant in Korea. The types of facilities for which remote monitoring has been used or is being proposed to be used include static facilities such as storage facilities, power plants such as Embalse or Wolsong, and reprocessing facilities where material is transformed. Current remote monitoring uses raise questions, such as how reliable they are and whether or not their use actually reduces inspection costs for the IAEA. As these systems are utilized in more facilities, the intent is that reliability will increase and costs will decrease. The key for the future of remote monitoring is to be able to improve the quality and reliability of the systems while reducing the overall cost.