SAFEGUARDS IN REPROCESSING - WHERE DO WE STAND?

During the years since June 1978, when the IAEA first held an Advisory Group Meeting on the subject of nuclear material safeguards for reprocessing, there have been numerous research efforts and countless informal international discussions related to safeguards in reprocessing. However, subsequent to the IWG-RPS, which issued its final report in September 1981, there have been no broad attempts to agree internationally on effective safeguards approaches for reprocessing. The IAEA has now begun preparations for a second Advisory Group Meeting, with a schedule which suggests that the meeting could profitably be held in the second half of 1987. Whether it will be possible at that time to define proposed safeguards approaches for announced 2-4 t/d reprocessing plants, with the expectation that those approaches would be generally acceptable to all interested Member States, remains to be seen, but such is not a primary objective of the meeting. Rather, the IAEA believes that it is time to review the substantial progress which has been made since 1978, to agree on what can be agreed on, and to define research efforts for those areas still requiring further research. This paper reviews in detail the currently planned sequence of events leading to the AGM. In particular it defines the \"do not pass\" criteria which have been planned into the schedule, requiring that an apparent tentative consensus be achieved on certain aspects of the problem (for example, on the capabilities of current technologies) before proceeding to the next steps. The paper also gives the author's personal opinions as to the areas in which an international consensus probably already exists or can be achieved, as well as the areas in which further research is needed before a true international consensus can be established.