THE IAEA NETWORK OF ANALYTICAL LABORATORIES (NWAL) AND THE NEED TO EXPAND FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SAMPLE ANALYSIS

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Department of Safeguards implements a set of technical measures to verify that States are honouring their international legal obligations to use nuclear material and technology only for peaceful purposes. Its independent verification work allows the IAEA to play an indispensable role in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. In order to verify States’ declared nuclear material inventories, and to detect any indications of possible undeclared material or activities, the collection of nuclear material and environmental samples is a core inspection activity. Nearly all of the nuclear material samples are analysed in the IAEA Safeguards Analytical Laboratory (SAL) in Seibersdorf, Austria. However, SAL has capacity for no more than 20% of the environmental samples that are submitted for analysis. The remaining environmental samples are analysed by select Member State laboratories that are part of a Network of Analytical Laboratories (NWAL). The NWAL currently includes 25 qualified laboratories from twelve Member States plus the European Commission. Although this constellation of laboratories provides a robust and reliable service to the IAEA, additional capacity is urgently needed for the analysis of environmental samples. Over the past decade, the number of environmental samples collected has doubled – from approximately 300 to 600 per year. Conversely, there has been only very limited growth in the number of labs in the NWAL during this time. The IAEA therefore faces a shortfall in analysis capacity, which has started to impact the overall processing time for environmental samples. Compared to 2019, one additional month is needed to fully process an environmental sample, on average, and the additional delay is due primarily to throughput limitations of existing NWAL members. The IAEA is responding to this shortfall by (1) requesting more capacity for environmental samples from existing NWAL members, and (2) seeking new candidate laboratories, especially in the areas of bulk analysis and uranium particle analysis. Since it typically takes two to five years to qualify a new laboratory into the NWAL, the IAEA is actively engaging Member State support programs to identify prospective new laboratories that have the appropriate infrastructure, analytical capabilities and experience for supporting particle analysis and/or bulk analysis of environmental samples.