In these circumstances, the chief value of safeguards is to provide evidence, as a confidence-building measure, that the country which has accepted these safeguards is faithfully abiding by its obligations. In this way, the assurance given by safeguards contributes to international security, lessens international tensions, facilitates international trade and helps to form mutually profitable links between States. A subsidiary purpose of safeguards is to deter any breach of treaty by the risk of early detection and by the ignominy and sanctions that might follow a detected breach. The extent to which safeguards are perceived as an assurance or as a deterrent varies somewhat from country to country — both according to the country in which they are being applied and in the perceptions of other countries.
The deterrent element may also be more important to a supplying State if the importing State is not a Party to the NPT and has therefore not pledged itself to forgo nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices. These matters are examined in Section 7.
6.1. Early steps to safeguards
As indicated, international safeguards are an institution which is historically unique. There were no precedents on which to build the system; it had to be set up largely from scratch and improved by trial and error.
Some of the main concepts go back to 1945 when, as we have seen, the USA proposed to the UN the ambitious Baruch Plan (see footnote 1) for establishing an International Atomic Development Authority to which should be entrusted "all phases of the development and use of atomic energy " from raw materials to the management and ownership of all potentially dangerous atomic energy activities, and power to control, inspect and license all other atomic activities. In a later variant of this plan, international ownership and management would have been confined essentially to enrichment and reprocessing facilities21, while other nuclear activities would have been conducted under international safeguards.
21 This concept was revived in the mid-1970s in proposals, which have so far not borne fruit, for establishing regional or multilateral fuel cycle centres. A study on this matter was carried out by the IAEA in 1977.
After the failure of the Baruch Plan, the main elements of safeguards were incorporated in US bilateral agreements for supplying material to other countries.
These agreements gave the USA the right to examine design information, call for reports and carry out inspections.
These rights were subsequently incorporated in the IAEA's Statute and in its safeguards system.
6.2. The NPT safeguards system
The 1965/1968 system contained in INFCIRC/66 and its revisions was designed chiefly to apply to individual plants or to supplies of plant and material from particular countries.
When the NPT entered into force it was necessary to devise a system which would cover the flow of nuclear material through the entire fuel cycle of the country accepting NPT safeguards as well as international transfers of nuclear material between facilities in different countries. The system — in effect, the model agreement drawn up for this purpose, INFCIRC/153 - is divided into two parts. The first contains the political and general obligations of the State and the IAEA; in some respects this corresponds to the earlier 1965/1968 system.
The second part contains an elaborate technical articulation of the safeguards to be applied. It reflects and embodies the very rapid evolution of safeguards approaches and techniques that had taken place in the 1960s. Using the language of the NPT itself, INFCIRC/153 explicitly prohibits any form of explosive use of safeguarded material. It does not, however, exclude withdrawal of material for other military uses of this material, but such withdrawal is subject to a number of strict conditions.
Under the NPT, the principal object of safeguards is nuclear material and not nuclear facilities as such22. The status of a plant which is said to contain no nuclear materials and the IAEA's right to inspect it are therefore somewhat unclear, although INFCIRC/153 does confer certain safeguards rights on the IAEA and imposes certain obligations on the State even in these cases.
In practice, of course, the IAEA devises a safeguards approach for every facility and this takes into account "design information" which the State submits to the IAEA for each facility. The safeguards approach is incorporated in the Facility Attachment agreed to for each facility.
6.3. Full-scope and selective safeguards
The NNW States Parties to the NPT and the Parties to the Tlatelolco Treaty engage themselves to accept what is known as (de jure) full-scope safeguards23. In a small number of other States which have not made such a far-reaching commitment, a mosaic of individual safeguards agreements covers at present all nuclear activities of which the IAEA is aware from publicly available information (de facto full-scope safeguards). Finally, there are four NNW States in which both safeguarded and unsafeguarded nuclear facilities are in operation24.
In all three cases, the State requests the IAEA fo apply its safeguards (although such a request may be a condition for obtaining nuclear supplies). However, the degree of assurance that the safeguards offer obviously differs between the three categories. In the first case, the intention is to provide a continuing assurance of non-proliferation. In the second case, the assurance given is that, at a particular time, all nuclear material or equipment of which the IAEA is aware is being used for non-explosive peaceful purposes. In the third case, this assurance would only relate to safeguarded facilities and no assurance could be given about those in which safeguards were not being applied.
6.4. Safeguards in evolution
After the IAEA Board of Governors had reached agreement on and approved each of the two safeguards documents (INFCIRC/66/Rev.2 and INFCIRC/153/
corrected), the IAEA faced the task of translating them into an effective operation for safeguarding and verifying the nuclear industries or those parts of them to which safeguards were to apply. It was necessary to organize and build up a
specialized staff and to provide training in a new profession, that of an international inspector. It was also necessary to develop new techniques, procedures and
strategies and to devise and deploy specialized instruments. The States in which safeguards were being applied had to learn to accept a novel experience, that of having international officials (always of another nationality) inspect one of their industries and research activities, moreover a particularly advanced and sensitive
The term "full-scope safeguards" covers two situations. It has been interpreted as a legal commitment to accept safeguards on all of a State's nuclear activities, for instance, while the State is party to a treaty which obliges it to do so. It has also been interpreted as a situation in which all the known nuclear activities of a State happen to be safeguarded at a particular time, by virtue of the operation of a mosaic of individual safeguards agreements applying to particular facilities or supply arrangements. In this case, the State concerned is under no continuing obligation to have safeguards applied on all of its facilities. On the contrary, it is legally free to build and operate unsafeguarded facilities. The first type of full-scope safeguards is sometimes referred to as "de jure full-scope" and the second as "de facto full-scope" safeguards.
24 India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa.
350
300
250
200
150
100
5 0 "
1971 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82
FIG.2. Number of nuclear reactors under safeguards in non-nuclear-weapon States.
one. The industry itself had to submit to the discipline25 of international safeguards, of supplying design information to an international authority, of keeping the
records required by that authority and opening them to its inspectors, of sending reports within a prescribed time limit to the authority, and of accepting its inspectors in their plants. In addition, under NPT safeguards, in due course the industry and governments had to co-operate in establishing what are known as State Systems of Accounting and Control (SSAC) as an infrastructure to ensure the effective operation of IAEA safeguards. Most of this evolution took place in the years after the NPT came into force, and particularly in the late 1970s after the ratification of the Treaty by leading industrial States when their large fuel
s The Member States of the European Atomic Energy Community voluntarily accepted a similar discipline in the late 1950s. However, Euratom's inspectors are nationals of Euratom States, and sometimes of the State in which safeguards are being applied.
1971 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82
FIG.3. Number of bulk handling facilities under safeguards in non-nuclear-weapon States.
cycles began to come under the IAEA's safeguards and when the nuclear industry in many NPT countries was rapidly expanding. This is shown in Figs 2 and 3.
What is surprising is not that the system has encountered difficulties but that it has worked so well and so successfully despite its teething troubles.
As may be expected of a complex of novel administrative, scientific, technical and political measures, the system is in constant evolution. Progress is being made in overcoming most of the problems it has been faced with. The IAEA's safeguards are now anchored in the NPT, the Tlatelolco Treaty and in
153 safeguards agreements in force with 90 countries. The IAEA has now fully taken over the role once played by bilateral safeguards, and it has established itself as one of the major elements in the international non-proliferation regime.
IAEA safeguards have become a prerequisite for nearly all international agreements for the supply of nuclear plant and materials and for the transfer of significant nuclear technology.
7. POSITIVE INTERNATIONAL MEASURES - COUNTER-MOTIVATION