Beyond Nuclear Material and Equipment: What Else is Relevant for Comprehensive Information Analysis in Integrated Safeguards?

As a part of its efforts to strengthen international safeguards, the IAEA is making use of increased amounts and types of information on states' nuclear and nuclear-related activities. The Agency now has the tools to gather and consider information generated by independent sources to check against a state's declaration. Besides the results of its own verification activities, e.g. complementary access, environmental sampling, cross-checks of declarations under the reporting scheme, evaluation of satellite images, the quality and independence of the SSAC, the characteristics of the national fuel cycle, the political and social infrastructure, and information from open sources can considerably endorse the credibility of the state's declaration. As a systematic means of categorizing and recording relevant information from the various sources, a "Physical Model" was developed by the IAEA describing the steps that would be involved in the nuclear-fuel cycle from source material acquisition to the production of weapons useable material. As implied by its name, this model concentrates on the physical aspects of a proliferation, i.e. nuclear material and equipment, and neglects the necessary remaining environment to conduct the diversion. Besides the nuclear material and the necessary equipment, the strategy for a proliferation attempt would have to make available additional resources, such as appropriate funding, human resources including the appropriate scientific infrastructure, special R&D activities, logistics and training, procurement, and decision-making bodies and procedures. The degree to which all this could be performed in a completely secret way, and thereby the extent of the risk of early detection, is strongly influenced by the state's political and social infrastructure. Even if the absence of any indicator for those activities in the open-source information of an open society cannot definitely prove the absence of such activities, it can clearly endorse the credibility of the state's declaration.