U.S.-IAEA Integrated Safeguards

Overview

Potential Facility Impacts

Current Activities

Overview

Purpose and Background

The addressed the meeting. In addition to announcing the newly approved U.S.-IAEA Additional Protocol (INFCIRC/288.Add.1) [long title: Protocol Additional to the Agreement Between the United States of America and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the Application of Safeguards] entered into force on January 6, 2009. The Additional Protocol is a follow-on agreement to the U.S.-IAEA Safeguards Agreement (INFCIRC/288), which entered into force since December 9, 1980. Together, these bilateral agreements between the United States and the IAEA are referred to as U.S.-IAEA Integrated Safeguards, or as “comprehensive” safeguards.

As one of the five acknowledged nuclear weapon state (NWS) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States is not obligated to conclude either of these agreements. The United States voluntarily did so to demonstrate its support for the IAEA’s integrated safeguards regime and to encourage other states to follow its example. Specifically, the United States recognized the importance of ensuring that non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) party to the NPT were not unfairly disadvantaged economically by incurring the costs associated with submitting data declarations and hosting IAEA inspection activities.

Under the NPT, NNWS do agree to conclude safeguards agreements with the IAEA. The primary purpose of these agreements is to enable the IAEA to verify that the nuclear activities undertaken by NNWS are for legitimate peaceful purposes.

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Potential Facility Impacts

Key Verification Measures

Although the U.S.-IAEA Additional Protocol contains no new arms control or disarmament obligations for the United States, it grants the IAEA increased rights to collect information and to conduct more types of on-site inspection activities at civil nuclear and nuclear fuel cycle-related locations, including locations not involving nuclear material.

As an NWS, however, the United States has the right to exclude from declaration and access all locations, activities, and information with direct national security significance. The United States may also apply managed access procedures as it determines necessary and appropriate to protect national security, confidential business, and other proliferation-sensitive information from inadvertent disclosure.

Under its integrated safeguards agreements with the IAEA, the United States has agreed to provide detailed information about declared locations. This information could include details about site design, individual buildings, and building contents and uses. Declared sites may also be required to maintain safeguards records and submit safeguards reports.

During on-site inspection activities, the IAEA may seek to verify the accuracy of declared information. However, the primary purpose of conducting inspections at U.S. locations is to assist IAEA inspectors with developing the skills and techniques they need to improve their capabilities for detecting and deterring the diversion of nuclear materials or the development of a secret nuclear weapons program in NNWS.

Although no need for taking samples is foreseen in the United States, under the U.S.-IAEA Additional Protocol IAEA inspectors may have a right to request environmental samples, or even location-specific samples, be taken to resolve questions or inconsistencies. The inspectors may also have the right to request “complementary” access to “any place on the [declared] site” or to “locations outside facilities,” including collocated or decommissioned facilities. However, before requesting to take samples or to conduct complementary access, the IAEA will conduct with U.S. government representatives and provide the United States with the opportunity to clarify and resolve any questions or inconsistencies.

[For more information about implementing U.S.-IAEA integrated safeguards, see the following DTIRP products: Integrated Safeguards: U.S.-IAEA Safeguards Agreement and U.S.-IAEA Additional Protocol (612P) and U.S.-IAEA Additional Protocol Implementation (610B)]

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Current Activities

Recent Developments

As of November 26, 2009, 166 countries had a Safeguards Agreement in force with the IAEA and 93 countries, including the United States, had an Additional Protocol in force. Thirty-five countries had signed an Additional Protocol with the IAEA, but these agreements have not yet entered into force.

Inspection Status

Globally, more than 2,000 safeguards inspections are conducted by IAEA inspectors each year at declared facilities located in NNWS. At the end of 2008, 168 surveillance and radiation monitoring systems with remote transmission capabilities were also in place and authorized for use.

In the United States, more than 299 civil nuclear facilities are eligible for IAEA inspections. These facilities include power and research reactors, commercial fuel fabrication plants, and uranium enrichment plants, among others. At present, the highly enriched uranium (HEU) at the DOE storage facility in Savannah River, South Carolina, is the only U.S. site under IAEA safeguards and is inspected monthly by IAEA inspectors.

The IAEA no longer inspects plutonium at the DOE Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Hanford Site in Hanford, Washington; the HEU transferred from Kazakhstan under Project Sapphire at the BWX facility (an NRC facility) in Lynchburg, Virginia; or the HEU at the DOE Y-12 Plant at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.