Quality Assurance Programme Development for the IAEA Department of Safeguards

The IAEA Statute and individual safeguards agreements concluded by States with the IAEA regulate the implementation of IAEA safeguards. Under Article III.A.5 of its Statute, the IAEA is authorized: \" .... to apply safeguards, at the request of the parties, to any bilateral or multilateral arrangement, or at the request of a State, to any of that State's activities in the field of atomic energy.\" Safeguards agreements are based on documents INFCIRC/66/Rev. 2 or INFCIRC/153 (for agreements concluded persuant to the Non-Proliferation Treaty). Paragraph 46 of INFCIRC/66/ Rev.2 states: \"The purpose of safeguards inspection shall be to verify compliance with safeguards agreements and to assist states in complying with such agreements and in resolving any questions arising out of the implementation of safeguards. Furthermore, paragraph 2 of INFCIRC/153 stipulates that safeguards will be applied \".... for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices ....\" In practice today essentially the same concepts are applied for both types of agreements, using the objective of safeguards to be the timely detection of diversion of significant quantities of nuclear materials from peaceful nuclear activities and deterrence of such diversion by the risk of early detection. It is the obligation of the Director General of the IAEA to bring to the attention of the Board of Governors any event or situation which may lead the Secretariat to conclude that nuclear material has been diverted from peaceful uses. As outlined further in the course of this paper, IAEA inspectors summarize the results of inspection activities in inspection reports. According to safeguards agreements, the IAEA is required to submit official communications to States, stipulating the result of inspection activities carried out. The Director General of the IAEA submits annually to the Board of Governors of the IAEA,a Safeguards Implementation Report ,(SIR)_1/ summarizing the performance of safeguards activities. The product of the Department of Safeguards is the implementation of safeguards measures. In support of its obligations, the Department of Safeguards is instituting a quality assurance programme for these safeguards measures. Its main goal is to confirm on a more routine day-to-day basis that all activities of the Department of Safeguards leading to the formulation of conclusions contained in statements to States and in the SIR, i.e. field and Headquarters activities, have been duly subject to quality control test procedures with the ultimate aim of providing the highest possible assurance to the world. Quality assurance is an essential contribution to the internal and external confidence in IAEA safeguards. An important objective of the quality assurance programme is to ensure that the activities performed by the Department of Safeguards are performed properly at all times, primarily to prevent errors. Some portions of the quality assurance programme are already in place, others are in the process of being introduced, whereas additional portions of this programme are only planned at this stage. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the ultimate profile of a comprehensive quality assurance programme, and to make a proposal for its gradual adoption by the IAEA Department of Safeguards. This paper also reports on recent efforts where there has been an inter-disciplinary exchange of ideas between safeguards experts and quality assurance experts.