Development of Information Sharing Requirements for Regional Nuclear Transparency

Nuclear transparency has been discussed in various contexts even within nuclear nonproliferation, i.e. confidence building between IAEA and the national governments, nuclear facility operators and the general public, and among experts in the region. Due to this wide range of the contexts, the discussions have been repeated such as to identify what the nuclear transparency is and what kind of information should be shared. With this background, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), US Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Korean Institute of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Control (KINAC), and Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) initiated a new phase of study to develop “requirements” for information sharing framework (ISF) focusing on regional nonproliferation experts as its primary participants (information providers/receivers). The requirements are under development to provide clear steps to establish ISF and ensure its sustainability. The “requirements” in this study is defined as to implement Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (PDCA) cycle for each specific category of information to be shared. “Planning” should be made by defining the essential elements of ISF; 1. Objective of the category of information, 2. Participants (information providers/ receivers), 3. Boundary, 4. Content 5. Information security and credibility, 6. Infrastructure, and 7. Evaluation. In “Do” stage as the next step, the partner organizations will collect the information that is agreed to be shared and initiate a sharing process. “Check” stage is to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the information sharing using the metrics and methodologies identified in “Planning” stage. The feedback obtained from the “Check” stage will be reflected to the “Planning” for the second cycle. Because the nuclear transparency is a voluntary process, sustainability is a key challenge. “Requirements” were developed so that if the planning and implementation of ISF is carried out following the “requirements”, ISF can automatically work in a sustainable and useful manner. This paper addresses the requirements for ISF that were developed by JAEA, SNL, KINAC, and KAERI, and demonstrates how they can work with showing the example planning.