Efforts for Appropriate Responses to Safeguards Activities
(1) Overview

In order to ensure transparency in the peaceful use of nuclear materials in state, it is important to appropriately respond to safeguards activities conducted by the IAEA/state. Inappropriate response to these activities could have significant impacts in sustainable nuclear utilization activities, such as raising suspicion from the international community about the misuse of nuclear materials by not only operators but also by state. In order to strengthen activities to appropriately respond to safeguards activities, JAEA has started the following one activity of (I) for all staff to promote understanding and raise awareness of safeguards and three activities of (II) for the staff involved in safeguards activities to appropriately respond on-site to the activities since 2020: (I) Basic education of safeguards, (II-1) Lectures, (II-2) Case studies and (II-3) Standardization of procedures related to safeguards response. Questionnaires, exam or evaluations from responsible persons in each site after those activities revealed that those efforts promoted understanding and raised awareness of safeguards for all staff, and raised and maintained to recognize safeguards as importance, understanding risks of inappropriate response to safeguards and unified of safeguards responses throughout JAEA for the staff involved in safeguards activities. These results indicated that the efforts contributed to decrease the risk of inappropriate response to safeguards activities.