An Operator Looks Back at Fifteen Years of Safeguards

Back in 1978, Hydro-Quebec, owner/operator of Gentilly 2, a single unit CANDU 600 MW nuclear power generating station, came to an agreement with the Canadian Safeguards Support Program under which the station would be used as a demonstration site for a safeguards scheme under development in concert with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Today, the station meets all of the Agency's Criteria requirements. But how and at what cost was this goal attained? In this paper, the utility's Safeguards Officer, who has seen it all come and go during these last 15 years, takes a long and hard look at what was, what is, and how things might have been different so that what will be, could be better. Since diere is no reason to believe that events are much different anywhere else, to look at them from the perspective of the traditional (and misplaced) bottom man on the safeguards totem pole just might turn out to be very interesting to anybody involved in, and concerned with, International Safeguards.