Implementation of non-proliferation

The International Atomic Energy Agency

The IAEA is an autonomous international organisation in the United Nations system. The agency’s mandate is the promotion of peaceful uses of nuclear energy, technical assistance in this area, and verification that nuclear materials and technology continue to be used for peaceful purposes. This last point gives the agency its non-proliferation role. The IAEA consists of three principal organs: the General Conference, the Board of Governors and the Secretariat.

IAEA safeguards system

The IAEA’s safeguard system is a system of accounting, containment, surveillance and inspections aimed at verifying that states are in compliance with their treaty obligations concerning the supply, manufacture and use of civil nuclear materials.¹

IAEA safeguards aim to detect the diversion of a significant quantity of nuclear material in a timely manner. They require that operators of nuclear facilities maintain and declare detailed accounting records of all movements and transactions involving nuclear material. Over 550 facilities and several hundred other locations are subject to regular inspection, and the auditing of their records and the nuclear material.

In case of non-compliance with IAEA safeguards, the IAEA Board of Governors calls upon the state to remedy the situation and reports the non-compliance to the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly. The Board of Governors may also impose specific penalties, such as curtailment or suspension of assistance, return of materials or suspension of privileges and rights. The UNSC may impose sanctions and approve other measures.

IAEA safeguards in practice

Failures of the traditional safeguards system
While traditional safeguards easily verified the correctness of formal declarations by suspect states, in the 1990s, attention turned to what might not have been declared. While accepting safeguards at declared facilities, Iraq had set up elaborate equipment elsewhere in an attempt to enrich uranium to weapons-grade, and North Korea attempted to use research reactors and a nuclear reprocessing plant to produce plutonium.

In the case of Iraq, the weakness of the system lay in the fact that no obvious diversion of material was involved. The uranium used as fuel probably came from indigenous sources (i.e. Akashat), and the nuclear facilities were built by the country itself without being declared or placed under safeguards. Iraq, as an NPT party, was obliged to declare all facilities, but did not do so. In the case of North Korea, the activities concerned took place before the conclusion of its NPT safeguards agreement.

Review process of the safeguards and adoption of the Additional Protocol
These cases, and particularly the Iraqi one, led to an in-depth review process after the 1990 NPT RevCon of the IAEA’s safeguards system. As a result of this review, the Additional Protocol was adopted in May 1997 to improve the system.

The Protocol is a legal document granting the IAEA additional inspection authority. The principal aim is to enable the agency’s inspectorate to provide assurance about both declared and potential undeclared activities. Under the Protocol, the IAEA is granted expanded rights of access to information and sites, as well as additional authority to use the most advanced technologies during the verification process.

As of 28 November 2022, Additional Protocols were in force with 140 states and EURATOM. Another 13 states have signed an Additional Protocol but have yet to bring it into force. The IAEA is also applying the measures of the Additional Protocol in Taiwan, and under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has agreed to implement its protocol provisionally.

New developments: The state-level safeguard approach
Safeguards are currently moving towards state-by-state evaluations, taking account of the state’s particular situation and the kind of nuclear materials it has. This involves more extensive judgement on the part of IAEA and the development of effective methodologies which reassure NPT states parties.

The state-level safeguards approach for each state is based on a structured and technical method used to analyse plausible pathways by which nuclear material suitable for use in a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device could be acquired.²

On this basis, technical objectives associated with the steps along this pathway are established to guide the planning, conduct and evaluation of safeguards activities for that state. To address the technical objectives, specific safeguards measures are identified in accordance with the scope of a state’s safeguards agreement.³

As of June 2020, state-level safeguards approaches had been developed for 131 states with a comprehensive safeguard agreement in force.⁴

Other relevant treaties and regimes

The Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty

The Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is often linked to another important aspect of nuclear non-proliferation: a prohibition of the production of fissile material for purposes other than verified peaceful applications. Such a prohibition would set a specific limit on the quantity of nuclear material accessible for military use. This objective is driving efforts within the Conference on Disarmament (CD) to engage in negotiations for a treaty that would prohibit any further production of fissile material intended for military use, known as the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT). In essence, this treaty is designed to complement the 1996 CTBT (which has not yet entered into force) and formalise the commitments made by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia to halt the production of weapons-grade material, while also imposing a similar prohibition on China. Furthermore, this treaty will increase pressure on Israel, India and Pakistan to agree to international verification.⁵

The Nuclear Suppliers Group

The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is a group of nuclear supplier countries that seeks to contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons through the implementation of two sets of Guidelines for nuclear exports and nuclear-related exports. The Guidelines also incorporate a trigger list. In doing so, the recognise that there is a class of technologies and materials that are particularly sensitive because they can lead directly to the creation of weapons-usable material.⁶

The NSG aims to ensure that nuclear exports are subject to appropriate safeguards, physical protection and non-proliferation conditions. It also seeks to restrict the export of sensitive items that can contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The NSG regime is a voluntary association, not bound by a treaty, and therefore has no formal mechanism to enforce compliance. Its Guidelines are applied both to members and non-members of the group. As practiced by NSG members, export controls operate on the basic principle of cooperation with restrictions as the exception.

The NSG and the NPT

The interaction between the NSG and the NPT framework started in 1978 when the group communicated the aforementioned Guidelines to the IAEA. However, it was not until the 1990s that there would be an explicit recognition under the NPT of export control measures, and thus of the NSG, as a useful tool to curb nuclear proliferation. For instance, at the 1990 NPT Review Conference, the committee reviewing the implementation of Article III of the treaty made a number of recommendations that had a significant impact on the NSG’s.⁷

These included:

• The need for further improvements in measures to prevent the diversion of nuclear technology for nuclear weapons
• That states engage in consultations to ensure appropriate coordination of their controls on the exports of items, such as tritium, not identified in Article III.2 of the treaty but still relevant to nuclear weapons proliferation and therefore to the NPT as a whole
• That nuclear supplier states require, as a necessary condition for the transfer of relevant nuclear supplies to NNWS, the acceptance of IAEA safeguards on all their current and future nuclear activities

The endorsement at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference of the full-scope safeguards policy already adopted by the NSG in 1992 showed that the international community believed this nuclear supply policy was vital to promote shared nuclear non-proliferation commitments and obligations. Specifically, Paragraph 12 of the decision on ‘Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament’ at the 1995 RevCon states that full-scope safeguards and international, legally binding commitments not to acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices should be a condition for granting licences for trigger list items under new supply arrangements with NNWS.⁸

The final document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference reaffirmed and recognised the value of export restrictions to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Footnotes

1. https://www.iaea.org/publications/factsheets/iaea-safeguards-overview ↩

2. https://www.iaea.org/topics/development-of-a-safeguards-approach#:~:text=The%20IAEA%20develops%20a%20State,explosive%20device%20could%20be%20acquired. ↩

3. https://www.iaea.org/topics/development-of-a-safeguards-approach#:~:text=The%20IAEA%20develops%20a%20State,explosive%20device%20could%20be%20acquired ↩

4. https://www.iaea.org/topics/development-of-a-safeguards-approach#:~:text=The%20IAEA%20develops%20a%20State,explosive%20device%20could%20be%20acquired ↩

5. https://www.nti.org/education-center/treaties-and-regimes/comprehensive-nuclear-test-ban-treaty-ctbt/#:~:text=The%20CTBT%20is%20frequently%20associated,material%20available%20for%20weapons%20use ↩

6. https://www.nuclearsuppliersgroup.org/en/guidelines ↩

7. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/infcircs/1997/infcirc539r8.pdf ↩

8. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/188026?ln=en ↩