AAAS Briefing: U.N. Watchdog Must Bolster Civilian Nuclear Safeguards

The nuclear watchdog for the United Nations urgently needs to strengthen its tools and procedures for overseeing peaceful uses of the atom as many nations consider building commercial power reactors for the first time, two nonproliferation specialists told a 25 March AAAS briefing.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, monitors all aspects of civilian nuclear programs in participating nations, including the manufacture and use of reactor fuel, with a goal of preventing diversion or theft of nuclear materials to make weapons.

But Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, and Charles Ferguson, a fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, cited gaps and shortcomings in the IAEA safeguards system that raise questions about the agency's ability to cope with a world that may soon see many more nuclear facilities.

Sokolski's center conducted a two-year study on IAEA safeguards. The resulting book, "Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom," was published in February and released at the Capitol Hill briefing, which was organized by the AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy. Ferguson, who has an article on "Strengthening Nuclear Safeguards" in the Spring, 2008 issue of Issues in Science and Technology, was a discussant at the briefing.

"There's no perfect safeguards system," Ferguson said. But the IAEA system, he said, "needs to be greatly improved." He and Sokolski said the agency, its resources already stretched, must improve its inspection procedures, reconsider what can be effectively safeguarded and update its yardsticks for what it considers militarily significant amounts of nuclear material.

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