Esarda Strategic Developments And Continued Evolution

The European Safeguards Research and Development Association (ESARDA), while celebrating its 50th Anniversary in 2019, opened up several new strategic lines of development and continues to grow both in membership and topics. This paper will present the motivation, the current status of strategic developments, and include a short outlook for the future. A number of steps were undertaken in the recent past to prepare ESARDA for the challenges and opportunities of the next decade. A pillar of the ESARDA development and evolution is the Reflection Group Report[1] that was finalized in 2019 and that looked at the short and medium priorities and activities and at some internal operational and organizational aspects. The outcome of this report was translated into a large set of concrete actions through the organization of a World Café in 2019. One year after, at its 2020 symposium, ESARDA took stock of where it stood w.r.t. action implementation: Each Working Group of ESARDA reported specifically on the work that was implemented in the preceding year. Concrete examples of this follow-up, such as the creation of new ESARDA Working Groups to deal with specific topics (Final Disposal, Material Balance Evaluation), the publication of a peer reviewed journal that is now fully SCOPUS indexed, and the outreach to new partners will be described in the paper. To illustrate further the position of ESARDA in the international safeguards and non-proliferation landscape a specific effort was made to compare the strategic priorities of ESARDA with those of the closest partners INMM and IAEA organizations, including input e.g. from the latest IAEA Safeguards Symposium, the IAEA Emerging Technology Workshops, the IAEA International Conference on Nuclear Security and others. This resulted in a multi-point comparison of which activities are being pursued by the different players and can also serve to identify opportunities for further collaboration and synergies. Some input from third organizations has also been included. The overview could be used as a living document to pursue future strategic developments in nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation, with some links to e.g. nuclear security and strategic trade control.[1] https://esarda.jrc.ec.europa.eu/images/files/Reflection_Group/RG_Report…