Five Decades of Safeguards and Directions for the Future: An Australian Perspective

An effective regime against the proliferation of nuclear weapons isessential to international peace and stability. The maintenance ofan effective nonproliferation regime depends on credible verification,to provide confidence that nonproliferation commitmentsare being honoured. Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty(NPT) the verification task has been entrusted to theInternational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system.Credible safeguards are vital in reinforcing the commitmentof parties to the NPT. If safeguards were seen as being deficient,confidence in the treaty would erode, leading to its failure. Thisplaces a heavy responsibility on the IAEA—and on member stateswhose support is needed by the IAEA.Safeguards have come a long way from their inception asbilateral inspection arrangements, applied by nuclear suppliers.Following the establishment of the IAEA in 1957, an IAEAinspectorate was developed and bilateral inspections were graduallyreplaced by IAEA inspections. With the conclusion of theNPT in 1968, IAEA safeguards moved to a position of majorinternational importance. The early focus on “item-specific” safeguardschanged to full scope, or comprehensive, safeguards, applicableto all the nuclear material in a state.By the mid-1990s the NPT had become almost universal.Over the same period there was substantial growth in nationalnuclear programs. The IAEA achieved considerable success developingand implementing a safeguards system able to cope withgrowing workload and complexity. There was however a seriousflaw—an emphasis on declared material and facilities and systematicinspection activities resulted in substantial effort for areasof low proliferation risk, while inadequate attention was given tothe problem of undeclared nuclear activities.The latter has emerged as the major challenge to safeguards—the IAEA is under considerable pressure to establish acredible capability to detect undeclared activities. At the sametime it must continue efficiency improvements, to achieve moreeffective performance from finite resources. Recent events havehighlighted that safeguards credibility depends not only on technicalcapability but on preparedness to take appropriate decisionsin case of noncompliance.