NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS IN THE UK
Bill McCarthy
Head, Nuclear Safeguards Policy
Department of Energy and Climate Change
Introduction
1.
Nuclear safeguards are measures to verify that States comply with their international
obligations not to use nuclear materials (plutonium, uranium and thorium) for nuclear explosives
purposes. Global recognition of the need for such verification is reflected in the requirements of the
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT1) for the application of safeguards by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Also, the Treaty Establishing the European Atomic
2
Energy Community (the Euratom Treaty ) includes requirements for the application of safeguards by
the European Commission.
2.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is responsible for the UK
Government input into the development of the international nuclear safeguards regimes. This aims to
ensure that the regimesare technically equipped to provide the assurances demanded of them by the
international community (e.g. to develop and implement new safeguards strengthening measures).
Responsibility for overseeing compliance with the UK commitment to the international safeguards
regimes belongs to the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR).
Euratom Safeguards in the UK
3.
All civil nuclear material in the UK has been subject to the terms of the 1957 Euratom
Treatysince the UK joined the European Community in 1973. The safeguards chapter of this Treaty
requires that the European Commission satisfies itself that in the territories of Member States:
‘(a)
(b)
ores, source materials and special fissile materials are not diverted from their
intended uses as declared by the users;
the provisions relating to supply and any particular safeguarding obligations assumed
by the Community under an agreement concluded with a third State or an
international organisation are complied with.’
4.
The means by which the safeguards objectives of the Euratom Treaty are to be achieved are
outlined in the Treaty. In brief these are:
a requirement that all operators of nuclear installations provide the Commission with Basic
Technical Characteristics (BTCs) describing the location and intended activities of their
installation;
a requirement that operators keep and report nuclear material accountancy records;
provision for the Commission to inspect installations and records. Article 81 provides for the
Commission to „send inspectors into the territories of Member States [who] shall at all times
have access to all places and data and to all persons .... to the extent necessary ... to apply
such safeguards ... to ensure compliance with the [Treaty safeguards] provisions’;
1
2
http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Nuclear/NPTtext.shtml
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/12006A/12006A.htm
provision for the imposition of sanctions by the Commission in the event of infringement of the
Treaty safeguards obligations. These sanctions can range from a published written warning
to withdrawal of the nuclear material concerned.
5.
The various reporting requirements (e.g. the scope of the BTCs, operator provision of a
programme of activities for their installation and the kind of nuclear material accountancy reports inventory change reports (ICRs), material balance reports (MBRs), Physical Inventory Listings (PILs)
and Advance Notifications of the import or export of material) are amplified in Commission Regulation
(Euratom) 302/053.
6.
Commission safeguards inspection activities are not addressed in the Regulation. The only
specification for such activities is that described above in Article 81 of the Treaty.Euratom safeguards
inspection activities focus primarily on nuclear materials accountancy – verifying that nuclear material
is present in the quantities declared and at the locations declared. Containment (e.g. the use of
seals) and surveillance (e.g. cameras) are important supplementary safeguards measures that avoid
the need to re-verify material that has not been processed since a previous inspection (e.g. nuclear
material in stores).
7.
In practice, Euratominspection effort is concentrated on major nuclear facilities holding large
quantities of nuclear material. However, Euratom safeguards measures are also applied to a lesser
extent on „small users‟ of nuclear material, e.g. universities conducting small scale experiments
involving nuclear material and owners of depleted uranium shielding containers.There are around 250
Euratom safeguards inspections in the UK each year.
8.
Whilst all civil nuclear material in the UK is subject to the terms of the 1957 Euratom Treaty,
both the Treaty (Article 84) and the associated regulation (Article 34) contain provisions for the nonapplication of Euratom safeguards to material intended to meet defence requirements. Euratom
safeguards do not therefore extend to military nuclear material in the UK. Article 34 of the Regulation
recognises the potential for the existence of „mixed‟ civil/military installations – Euratom safeguards
apply to the civil material in such facilities.
IAEA Safeguards in the UK
9.
Non-nuclear weapon States (NNWS) party to the NPT are required to conclude a
comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) with the IAEA that applies to all nuclear material in the
State. The nuclear weapons States (NWS) party to the Treaty (China, France, Russia, UK, US) are
not required to conclude safeguards agreements. However, primarily in order to address the
concerns of some non-nuclear weapon States (NNWS) that their nuclear industry would otherwise be
at a commercial disadvantage, all the NWS have agreed so-called “voluntary offer” safeguards
agreements with IAEA that enable the application of safeguards to some or all civil nuclear material in
their State. In the case of the UK (and France),Euratom is also a party to the voluntary offer
agreement. The basic safeguards undertaking in the tripartite UK/Euratom/IAEA safeguards
agreement (INFCIRC/2634,which came into force in 1978) is acceptance of safeguards,
„on all source or special fissionable material in facilities or parts thereof within the United
Kingdom, subject to exclusions for national security reasons only’.
10.
The number of facilities made available for designation by each NWS varies, ranging from all
civil nuclear facilities under the UK and US agreements to only two or three facilities under the
Chinese/Russian agreements. Under INFCIRC/263, the UK provides the IAEA with a list of its civil
nuclear facilities containing more than one effective kilogram5 of nuclear material. Accountancy
3
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2005/l_054/l_05420050228en00010070.pdf
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/Others/infcirc263.pdf
5
Article 92(2) G, INFCIRC/263: “Effective kilogram” means a special unit used in safeguarding nuclear
material. The quantity in “effective kilograms is obtained by taking:
(a) For plutonium, its weight in kilograms;
4
information for all these facilities is supplied to the IAEA via Euratom, and the IAEA is free to
„designate‟ any of them, or any part of them, for inspection. However, the UK does retain the right to
remove facilities and/or withdraw material from the scope of the agreement for reasons of national
security. As part of the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), the UK agreed that any future
withdrawals from safeguards would ‘be limited to small quantities of nuclear materials not suitable for
explosive purposes’ and undertook to publish information on any such withdrawals6.
11.
Currently, the UK facilities designated and subject to inspection by the IAEA are storage
facilities at Sellafield containing the separated plutonium product of fuel reprocessing (THORP
Plutonium Storage and Sellafield Plutonium Store 9) and the Urenco Capenhurst gas centrifuge
enrichment facilities. Safeguards inspections at these facilities are performed jointly by the IAEA and
Euratom under the so-called „joint team‟ approach designed to minimise duplication of activities.
IAEA/Euratom inspections at the designated facilities at Sellafield and Capenhurst currently take
place on a monthly basis.
Additional Protocol to IAEA Safeguards Agreements
12.
Deficiencies in the IAEA safeguards system were revealed after the 1990/91 Gulf War when it
was discovered that Iraq, despite having a CSA, had nevertheless had a large clandestine nuclear
weapons programme which the IAEA had not detected. In essence, it was concluded that this failure
had occurred because CSAs had been implemented to focus on checking the correctness of the
declarations made by States without putting similar emphasis on checking the completeness of these
declarations (i.e. that the State had declared everything it ought to have declared).
13.
To remedy this deficiency a number of steps were taken to strengthen IAEA safeguards
during the 1990s. Some of the new measures could be undertaken under the legal authority of
existing safeguards agreements, e.g. the use of environmental sampling, but other measures required
new legal authority. The model of an Additional Protocol7 (AP) to CSAs was therefore
developed,which requires NNWS to provide the IAEA with a wider range of information and greater
rights of access for IAEA inspectors (so-called „complementary access‟). Under an AP, a NNWS must
provide the Agency with broader information about, and access to, all aspects of its nuclear fuel cycle
related activities, for example, research and development activities not involving nuclear material, a
description of the use of each building on a nuclear site and a description of the „scale of operation‟ of
certain key manufacturing processes (e.g. the manufacturing of centrifuge rotor tubes and the
assembly of centrifuges).
14.
A key factor in the agreement of the model AP was the statements made by the NWS of the
measures that they would be prepared to accept in a legally binding manner as a protocol to their
existing „voluntary offer‟ safeguards agreements. Whilst each NWS has agreed an AP, the scope of
each AP varies.The US AP is essentially the same as that entered into by NNWS, except that there is
an exemption clause that precludes the provision of information on, and access to, activities relevant
to US national security. The Russian and Chinese APs do not provide for any complementary
access, but do provide some limited information (e.g. on exports) relevant to collaboration with
NNWS.
(b) For uranium with an enrichment of 0.01 (1%) and above, its weight in kilograms multiplied by the
square of its enrichment;
(c) For uranium with an enrichment below 0.01 (1%) and above 0.005 (0.5%), its weight in kilograms
multiplied by 0.0001; and
(d) For depleted uranium with an enrichment of 0.005 (0.5%) or below, and for thorium, its weight in
kilograms multiplied by 0.00005.
6
Data from 2001 onwards are available on the ONR website at
http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/safeguards/materials.htm
7
Described in IAEA document INFCIRC/540(corrected) http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/1997/infcirc540c.pdf.
14.
The UK and French APsare similar (there are some differences in the complementary access
provisions) in that they contain all the measures that contribute to the IAEA‟s capability to detect
undeclared nuclear activities in NNWS, andthe measures that improve the effectiveness or efficiency
of IAEA safeguards at facilities designated for inspection under the „voluntary offer‟ agreements. This
involves providing information (and associated access) when relevant nuclear activities are conducted
for, in co-operation with or are otherwise relevant to a NNWS.
8
Declarations required under the UK Additional Protocol (UKAP )
15.
The UKAP requires the provision to the IAEA of declarations, inter alia, on the following
activities when conducted in collaboration with or are otherwise relevant to a NNWS:
general description (and location) of nuclear fuel-cycle related research and development
activities, whether or not nuclear material is involved, carried out anywhere when funded,
specifically authorised or controlled by, or carried out on behalf of the UK Government;
a description of the „scale of operations‟ for each location engaged in certain nuclear-related
9
manufacturing activities ;
information regarding the location or further processing of intermediate or high-level waste
containing plutonium, high enriched uranium or uranium-233;
information on the export (and, on request, import) of specified equipment and non-nuclear
material10;
general plans for the succeeding ten-year period relevant to the development of the nuclear
fuel cycle; and
general description (and location) of nuclear fuel-cycle related research and development
activities, not involving nuclear material, related to enrichment, reprocessing of nuclear fuel or
the processing of intermediate or high-level waste containing plutonium, high enriched
uranium or uranium-233, carried out anywhere but which are notfunded, specifically
authorised or controlled by, or carried out on behalf of the UK Government.
16.
Declarations, except on exports, are required annually before 15 May each year. Information
on exports is required quarterly, within sixty days of the end of each quarter.
17.
The Government knows the vast majority of the organisations and individuals that are
carrying out the activities on which declarations are required. However, because it is possible that
others are (legitimately) conducting some of the activities without the knowledge of Government, the
Nuclear Safeguards (Notification) Regulations 200411(made under the Nuclear Safeguards Act
200012) requires those conducting the manufacturing activities or enrichment, reprocessing or waste
processing R&D activities not funded by Government,to make themselves known to ONR
8
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2005/infcirc263a1.pdf
Manufacture of centrifuge rotor tubes or the assembly of gas centrifuges, manufacture of diffusion barriers,
manufacture or assembly of laser-based systems, manufacture or assembly of electromagnetic isotope
separators, manufacture or assembly of columns or extraction equipment, manufacture of aerodynamic
separation nozzles or vortex tubes, manufacture or assembly of uranium plasma generation systems,
manufacture of zirconium tubes, manufacture or upgrading of heavy water or deuterium, manufacture of nuclear
grade graphite, manufacture of flasks for irradiated fuel, manufacture of reactor control rods, manufacture of
criticality safe tanks and vessels, manufacture of irradiated fuel element chopping machines and the construction
of hot cells.
10
Items on the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) „Trigger List‟ (http://www.nuclearsuppliersgroup.org), as it
stood in September 1997.
11
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/1255/made
12
The Act that implements the UKAP, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/5/contents.
9
(Safeguards) by 15 January each year, if they have conducted the activities anytime during the
previous calendar year.
18.
ONR (Safeguards) provides the declarations required by the UKAP to the IAEA. They write to
those conducting the activities in January each year, requesting the information necessary to compile
the declarations be provided by the end of February. It is important that this time frame is met, as the
information provided by some respondents inevitably requires clarification or raises questions. These
need to be resolved to enable the declarations for the UK as a whole to be provided by the deadline
13
of 15 May. Guidelines are available to assist with the provision of declarations .
Evolution of IAEA Safeguards
19.
The measures of the AP arenot simply added to CSA measures.The two were combined in an
optimal manner to achieve the maximum effectiveness and efficiency within the resources available to
the IAEA, to produce what was known as an „integrated safeguards system‟. Once the IAEA has
drawn the „broader conclusion‟ of credible assurance of the absence of undeclared nuclear activities
in a NNWS, which needs to be reaffirmed on an annual basis, it can draw up an integrated
safeguards approach for the State concerned.
20.
Under integrated safeguards, the IAEA can relax certain aspects of the way it applies
safeguards in a NNWS that only has a CSA, in particular for less sensitive nuclear material. For
example, in a NNWS with a CSA and an AP the Agency has better assurance that there are no
undeclared reprocessing facilities, so it is able to reduce the frequency with which it would otherwise
inspect nuclear reactors and spent fuel (the material that is fed into reprocessing facilities and from
which plutonium is separated). Similarly, if there is better assurance of the absence of undeclared
enrichment facilities, the Agency may introduce less intensive verification of depleted and natural
uranium (the material fed to enrichment plants to produce enriched uranium).
21.
Safeguards implementation by the IAEA is continually evolving to address new challenges,
take into account experience gained from past safeguards implementation and take advantage of new
techniques and technologies. The increasing number of facilities and quantities of nuclear material
that require safeguarding, and the finite resources available, places great emphasis on improving
efficiency while strengthening effectiveness.
22.
The current evolution is under the so-called State-level Concept (SLC). The SLC is a holistic
approach to safeguards implementation, which makes greater use of the IAEA‟s ability to consider the
State as a whole. It involves a comprehensive evaluation of all safeguards-relevant information
regarding a State, and the use of objective (but not subjective) State-specific factors to draw up a
State-level approach for each State. The use of an integrated safeguards approach in States with a
CSA and AP was essentially the first use of the SLC.The SLC will enable the IAEA to make best use
of its resources, by differentiating between States (without discriminating) to focus effort on areas of
greater safeguards significance. The SLC will also result in less predictable safeguards, which will
increase its deterrence value.
23.
As now, the greatest scope for changes in safeguards implementation will be for States with
both a CSA and AP. However, the SLC will also apply to States with other types of safeguards
agreements within the context of the safeguards agreement concerned, including in the UK under our
„voluntary offer‟ agreement.
Conclusions
24.
All civil nuclear material in the UK is subject to Euratom safeguards and to the terms of the
UK/Euratom/IAEA safeguards agreement. The fundamental safeguards measure is nuclear materials
13http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/safeguards/may04guidelines.pdf
accountancy, i.e. verification by international inspectors that nuclear material is present in the
locations and quantities declared. Containment (e.g. the use of seals) and surveillance (e.g.
cameras) are important supplementary measures.
25.
The UK makes declarations to the IAEA of nuclear-related activities conducted in
collaboration with non-nuclear weapons States (NNWS) under an additional protocol to the
UK/Euratom/IAEA safeguards agreement. This is to assist the IAEA in its assessment of the
completeness of declarations made by the NNWS, i.e. assurance of the absence of undeclared
nuclear material and activities in the NNWS.
26.
Safeguards implementation by the IAEA evolves continually, to address new challenges, take
into account experience gained from past safeguards implementation and take advantage of new
techniques and technologies.The current evolution is under the so-called State-level Concept (SLC),
a holistic approach to safeguards implementation, which makes greater use of the IAEA‟s ability to
consider the State as a whole. The SLC is applicable to all States, including the UK.
Further Information
http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/safeguards/index.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/nuclear/safeguards_en.htm
http://www.iaea.org/safeguards/