A Sustainable Approach for Developing Treaty Enforcement Instrumentation

5 Concluding Remarks

The situation encountered by the IAEA is generally similar to that of other treaty enforcement agencies. Highly specific user requirements, the limited need for systems over the complete technology lifetime, tight budgets, policy changes, and rapid movements in the electronics market make it difficult to ensure the availability of identical instrumentation for the required time-span (up to two decades). However, the experience gained in the Safeguards area can help other agencies in implementing instrumentation to expand confidence that treaty signatories comply with treaty obligations. In particular, the open, continuous dialogue between all involved parties can serve as an example that different players with different missions can find sufficient common ground to support one common goal: the provision and support of treaty enforcement instrumentation.

The problem solving mechanisms and approaches which have proved successful in the Safeguards area are in theory applicable to other treaty enforcement fields. However, cooperation in the technical field, (e.g. through the sharing of technology between multiple agencies) is less assured of success. Such sharing activities would mitigate the economic problems met in the development and production of instrumentation in niche markets. Unfortunately, the highly specific needs of individual agencies prohibit the one-to-one transfer of instrumentation to another field. Despite these obstacles, certain synergies are possible, making an on-going dialogue between different treaty enforcement agencies a cost and effort saving necessity. Thus, communication efforts such as the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) and the European Safeguards Research and Development Association (ESARDA) Working Group Verification Technologies and Methodologies should be encouraged and further expanded in the future.