Year
1988
Abstract
Since a couple of years, the question has been raised whether international safeguards should or not include, in addition to accountancy verification, and to containement/surveillance, a third category of measures, called \"monitoring\". As it sometimes happens, a discussion started on this subject with strong arguments pros and cons, before having even attempted to define clearly what \"monitoring\" actually ment, when dealing with international safeguards. My opinion is that such a discussion is purposeless because actually any monitoring is, by defini- tion, a surveillance measure. The confusion stems from the fact there has been a tendancy in the past to give a somewhat restrictive definition of that \"Containment/Surveil- lance\"1 : \"containment\" was more or less considered as synonymous with sealing or seals, and \"surveillan- ce\" with cameras. I think the meaning of the words \"containement and surveillance\" as used in IAEA infcirc 153 is much broader, and may include as well human surveillance or monitoring if, when and where appropriate. So the real ques- tion is what kind of human or instrumented monito- ring m ay be useful and appropriate as part of the surveillance measures to be implemented in so m e plants, in addition, in com bination, or in place of the well-known cameras or video sys- tems.