The Process to Improve an SSAC to Meet New Demands in International Safeguards

For some time the national safeguards authority of Sweden has been working toward upgrading the capabilities of its SSAC, with the aim of performing verification activities, in order to draw independent conclusions about the material balance as declared by Swedish facility operators. This paper discusses ways to upgrade the functioning of the SSAC to meet new demands in international safeguards. It is possible that a higher level of SSAC could enable a more efficient approach to international safeguards by giving it an increased role. Before this could happen the SSAC would have to fulfill certain basic requirements and it would need formalized procedures for safeguards implementation and evaluation. The SSAC would draw its conclusions and the IAEA would evaluate the performance of the SSAC to ensure a certain standard was met. Some of the routine work presently performed by the IAEA could be performed by the SSAC provided that authentication methods could be identified. Examples are service of containment and surveillance equipment at nuclear power plants, flow verification of unirradiated nuclear materials and by work sharing at international safeguard inspections. This will also be discussed in the paper.