Trevor Findlay’s Canadian Centre for Treaty Compliance has just released a report on Nuclear Futures which makes for excellent reading. In the report, there is a brief paragraph on information driven safeguards.
The Agency claims it is pursuing what it describes as “information driven” (IAEA, 2007b: 16) safeguards, supported by a modern “knowledge management system” (including a database that records the experiences of all safeguards inspectors). However, there remain concerns that the IAEA inspectorate’s “culture” has still not entirely changed from one of examining a narrow range of information to one that considers each individual state’s activities holistically. Further concerns have been expressed about the lack of transparency and openness within the Agency that permits vital information about state compliance to be too tightly held within certain offices, thereby defeating the purpose of the holistic approach (ICNND, 2009: 91-92)
Beyond doubt, the last few decades have seen a transformation of the safeguards business. Until about 20 years ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency only corroborated states’ nuclear material on declared nuclear sites. They did this through measurements and observations. They quantified the nuclear material, they counted fuel rods, and inspectors even watched how materials flowed through the plants themselves.
The inspectors of the 1970s and 1980s realized the limits of the system they enforced. It doesn’t take much to figure out that the easiest way to defeat safeguards is to bypass them. All proliferative states have had to figure out how to deal with one form or another of safeguards on their territories.
Most states seeking to develop nuclear weapons have found that it is best to conduct forbidden activities well away from the prying eyes of the international inspectorate. Iraq’s strategists, for instance, only felt that they could divert its HEU at Tuwaitha after IAEA inspectors had been expelled. And Sweden’s cold warriors felt that they could only convert the R-3/Adam reactor to military use once it had been purged of safeguarded heavy water. Even the most primitive IAEA safeguards works as an ‘area denial’ tool and this is a benefit not to frown on.
In the last two decades, the IAEA has faced ever increasing expectations on what it is able to deliver. Many expect the organization to become nuclear detectives where it has once been nuclear accountants. This is by no means a bad idea, as some have suggested.
The IAEA has moved rapidly towards a system of state-level evaluations. This regime itself is indistinct, and descriptions of it are coached in management language such as “information driven” and “knowledge management system”.
In a nutshell, the IAEA has started to use the large information flow given to it by the Additional Protocol and other knowledge sources to its advantage by feeding it into analytical tools such as the physical model (see one description here). The IAEA has also, over the years, started to realize the power of open source information and satellite imagery analysis. One plan is to feed all this information into a central repository which, well, looks a bit like an internal Wikipedia. I have seen the demo, and it is impressive.
All of this may give the folks in Vienna the potential to describe and understand the entirety of the country’s fuel cycle. Once they are allowed to do that, it will become increasingly difficult to hide away a parallel fuel cycle. But reform does need a change in attitude within the IAEA. Some serving or former safeguards inspectors still like to point out how slowly the organization has changed, and how much work remains to be done.
Be that as it may, the most important thing is that work has started.
Peter J. Brown | April 28, 2010
Given the circumstances, the IAEA has the opportunity to tap into satellite-based solutions that extend well beyond the realm of conventional satellite imagery. Analytics aside, while any enhancement and augmention of existing IAEA satellite imagery projects represent a positive step, the IAEA should be out front and embracing non-traditional and perhaps even bleeding edge applications including mobile as well as fixed closed-loop yet redundant monitoring capabilities. Achieving a more self-contained, reliable and perhaps even assertive layering of safeguards and on-site monitoring equipment may present problems from a budgetary standpoint, but given the looming surge in new nuclear plant construction as well as the R&D, transport and storage dimensions associated with this activity, everyone better have their checkbooks out, the sooner the better.
Beta | April 28, 2010
Andreas, thanks for a very interesting post!
The USIC also uses an internal Wikipedia
Attaché | April 29, 2010
As long as Canada, Germany and Japan continue to receive the vast majority of IAEA safeguards scrutiny, committing more financial resources to the Agency will only have an incremental effect on the application of IAEA safeguards to those states most at risk of undeclared nuclear activities. (Unless one concludes that those three states above are risky in this sense, at this point in time.)
As Findlay et al conclude, the Agency culture needs to move toward more fulsome examinations of risk along with priority setting. This will lead to better international confidence in a verification system with a realistic resource envelope, particularly in today’s climate.
It is worth noting that the IAEA Safeguards Department has the largest number of secretariat staff on long-term contracts, so even amongst the IAEA bureaucracy (an independent intergovernmental agency in the UN System, mind), there is less frequent staff turnover. Without strong support from the top, change here will take time.
VS | April 29, 2010
Dear Andreas,
How far, or how close are “Information Driven Safeguards” from “Intelligence Driven Safeguards?
Can you see a difference between these two terms, can you draw a line? Could it be perhaps a tautology to use these two terms together?
Andreas Persbo | April 29, 2010
VS, et. al.
These are all good questions. Sources in Vienna tell me that my post was quite well timed, since they had a meeting on information driven safeguards today. The meeting apparently highlighted the role of the Additional Protocol for information driven safeguards. The department is now streamlining their procedures, with a view of presenting new procedural proposals in July. So work is indeed progressing nicely in Vienna.
Information driven safeguards are not intelligence driven safeguards. While it is true that the Agency uses intelligence sources, supplemented by open source analysis, the vast majority of data comes from the state declarations themselves. I think this is an exceptionally important point. The IAEA I know prides itself for its integrity, impartiality and confidentiality (and I know that some states doesn’t think that they’re upholding their confidentiality ethos well).
As for the resource question. The IAEA does commit large resources on states with untarnished non-proliferation credentials, that is true. But that does not mean that they are not investing large amounts of intellectual effort and financial resources into investigating states suspected of non compliance. For instance, when Iran were implementing the additional protocol, there was a substantial sample backlog to deal with. While the IAEA would not say what caused the backlog, it’s clear that it wasn’t huge amount of samples from Canada that was causing the jam.
I’m not convinced that more frequent staff turnover will help bring reform. I thought so initially, but have subsequently been convinced that a higher turnover might slow things down. The IAEA have difficulty recruiting good inspectors. This is well known.
Peter. I’m also aware of the offsite analytical assets that are at the Agency’s disposal. They can do magic with satellite imagery (far beyond anything you’ve seen in open source). And I’m a firm believer that remote monitoring (both visual and telemetric) will lead to cost savings in the future. You don’t have to fly everyone everywhere.
That said, not even the best technology will be able to replace the sharpness of the human eye, and the brain’s ability to rapidly draw contextual conclusions.
Andreas
Attaché | May 1, 2010
Good points, all of them, Andreas.
Just to clarify about human resource issues in IAEA-SG: staff turnover won’t ensure cultural change, in and of itself. Rather, given the relative lack of turnover there is a certain inertia within the SG secretariat staff.
This does not necessarily apply to inspection techniques or utilization of modern technologies (better radiation detection equipment, more accurate and sensitive analytical services, imagery, etc.). It is probably more applicable to strategic planning, risk analyses and management, as well as the development of overall, State-level, safeguards approaches. For this type of change to come about, it needs to be fully embraced and driven by the executive and management within the Department.
(The Agency, much like other scientific and technical institutions, can be constrained by the promotion of the brightest technical minds to the executive and management ranks. These strengths do not always equate to excellent leadership or interpersonal skills. It is an exceedingly difficult job for an organization like the IAEA to recruit executives that can manage and lead, while at the same time posessing a solid understanding of, and at least some decent, relevant experience within, the nuclear industry.)
This is a question of culture, after all and not technical competence.
Back to financial resources. It is the IAEA member states that fund its regular budget, based on the overall UN Scale of Assessments. Developed countries with higher GDPs pay more (with a continuing bias toward “Western” developed countries and not emerging, G20 types). These same countries need to fund, as a mandatory condition of membership, all other UN System organizations in the same manner. UN Peacekeeping, World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Development Programme, UN Environment Programme, etc etc. While many in developed countries recognize the great importance of the Agency (particularly patrons of this site like myself), States need to spend their money on all these other priority areas also. It is unreasonable to expect the Agency to receive significant increases to its regular budget in the near term, given, in the first instance, that the very member states that provide the majority of its funding are the most pressured in their national finances. The entire G8 are running significant and dangerous federal deficits again this year, with significant unemployment in some.
The Agency will not necessarily need to do more with less, as it has received real growth regular budget increases for at least the past decade, in contrast to many other UN System agencies, which have seen budget freezes and even some cuts. The IAEA will necessarily need to be more disciplined in priority setting, reducing administrative overhead, etc.
It may not be leadership commitment to culture change that drives information driven safeguards and new approaches away from inspectors on the ground (and in business-class airplane seats on duty travel) to remote monitoring, but rather a stagnation of budget increases. Either way, change is inevitable and sometimes beneficial.
Food for thought.
SR | May 4, 2010
Dear all,
Many thanks for your viewpoints.
May I take this opportunity to mention something about the “rotation” and “long term contract”…. and a few other statements?
First point:
Except for a very few organizations, inspectorate means, after a few years, that the IAEA staff does not have much value on the “open market”. Who would like to hire a well trained inspector when well trained nuclear fuel cycle managers are available?
Second point:
How long does it take to train a Safeguard Inspector?
This is not a matter of months, this is a matter of years, basically four to five. Can you rotate a well trained person so easily? Should you do it?
Third point:
How much effort is given to training, i.e. to the capability of changing the strategy of already trained/experienced inspectors?
This is the work of a full section! Tremendous effort is put into this business, with a very high collaboration of various supportive countries.
Fourth point:
Should effort be concentrated on some countries and not on others? This is not related to the internal policy but rather to the external one! The mandate is to treat each country on a same basis. Countries with no bad records are given as much attention as countries with bad records. This said, some bad records countries have turned into good records one while the opposite is also true. Furthermore, purely good records country give a chance to establish what should be seen so it makes it easier to conclude what is wrong elsewhere, helping to draw the line between “as should be” and “as should not be”. [Note that some well behaving countries are using the IAEA-SG inspections as an almost free QC of their own process!]
Finally, with the current restart of nuclear energy (more than 100 new reactors), and its very demanding situation on the job market, it is already hard enough for the Agency to retain its trained inspectors not to mention how hard it is to get nuclear fuel cycle trained new ones and even less to get weapon related knowledgeable inspectors!
Not only because the current salaries are playing a negative role, but also the fact that once in Safeguard, the carrier expectations are rather limited.
The cost of IAEA-SG is somewhere arround 100 million USD, (one tenth of the amount spent by the US on safeguards, about the amount os a middle sized US town police department), said in other words: for what is done, the price is cheap.
Improving safeguards on a basically static since many years budget maybe good, considering a change of mandate with a comprehensive review of the budget may also be valuable. Remember, although IAEA-SG represent a large group among the IAEA, these are alltogether 700 staff (inspectors, analysts, managers, technician, secretaries, trainees, etc) for the entire world!
A weapon program cost more than one hundred years of the SG mandate! A weapon dropped somewhere would indirectly cost more than one thousand time this amount!
Best regards
SR.
Andreas Persbo | May 5, 2010
I have been moving into new digs, and won’t have connection at home for another two weeks. If I’ve missed out on comment moderation, please let me know.
This has been a thought-provoking thread indeed. There has been a number of exceptionally insightful posts over the last few days. I’m suspecting that I’m dealing with people from Vienna, and I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to contribute to the blog.
While I’m sympathetic to the argument that safeguards inspectors may not have brilliant job prospects once they’re stuck in IAEA-SG (I know a couple of people that have problem looking for new jobs internally even), this isn’t a good enough argument in my mind to resist reform. After all, the IAEA is not a job-insurance scheme.
However, the training point is pertinent, especially when viewed against the rotation policy. One inspector once told me that one problem is that the relatively unqualified staff stay for too long, whereas the more qualified staff tend to move on quite readily. He was referring to inspectors from developing nations with little or no fuel cycle assets versus inspectors from countries with a developed nuclear infrastructure. This, in this persons mind, was a good enough argument to keep the rotation policy going.
Another person told me that a safeguards inspector is only at his or hers most effective towards the very end of the tenure (and this is a point pressed by SR), which would be an argument against the rotation policy.
There has to be middle ground somewhere between the two arguments but I’m yet to hear it.
Attache: what do you think of the idea of a safeguards-fee on power generation? That is having the industry directly contribute to the costs of the system?
Attaché | May 5, 2010
Andreas,
Thanks for the question, which is both insightful and timely given tough regular budget negotiations, annually, amongst IAEA member states over the past several years. Safeguards is the priciest major programme so has been a lightning rod (and so has the nuclear security programme recently).
Having nuclear facility operators fund (or contribute to) safeguards is a difficult prospect for a number of reasons. Off the top, you would have operators of not only nuclear power plants, but uranium refining, conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication generally getting a free ride in NWS, which only submit a limited number of facilities to “voluntary offer” safeguards agreements. This inserts an immediate commercial advantage over equivalent facilities operated in NNWS submitting to the full CSA and AP (Netherlands, Germany, Canada, etc). This goes for fuel cycle facilities as well as NPPs (electricity grids are tied together in North America and Europe so cheaper generation in USA or France, for example, resulting from an absence of a safeguards tax or fee, could tilt the market).
Then there is the higher-level question regarding the benefits of safeguards, with respect to international peace and security. A fairly unanimous developed country view is that safeguards benefit all States, so the [realistic] costs should therefore be borne by all. Moreover, in terms of safeguards funding at the IAEA, developing countries are still “shielded” from their full proportionate share (based on the overall UN Scale of Assessments). This political agreement goes way back to the entry into force of the NPT and the massive increase in safeguards funding at that time. In the late 1990s, and modified in 2003(?), there was agreement amongst IAEA member states to gradually “de-shield” developing countries toward full payment of their share of safeguards costs. The timelines was based on approximate levels of economic development, with countries being placed into three categories/timelines, and some countries staying shielded from their full share of safeguards costs until the 2035.
(It is useful to note that several countries in the G20 “economic leaders” are both shielded from safeguards costs and avail themselves of IAEA Technical Cooperation funding, skewing the overall investment into IAEA programmes even further toward more traditional developed countries).
Finally, nuclear is already the most regulated industry (and not without reason, necessarily) so operators in many countries already submit to significant licence fees as well as increased and increasing security and emergency preparedness requirements. Add to these, for those facilities in NNWS, the requirements to screen, escort and respond to safeguards inspectors on a regular basis, as well as prepare reports to the Agency and their State System of Accounting for and Control of Nuclear Material. A safeguards tax, depending on amount, may be overly burdensome on the operator, making nuclear even less financially viable in some regions.