ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some of the main problems the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) runs into in applying its three safeguards ‘measures’—material accountancy, containment and surveillance—and its four safeguards procedures—design review, records, reports and inspections—and examines some suggested solutions. Diversion of safeguarded material under the eye of the IAEA’s safeguards is indeed one of the ways in which the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) non-nuclear weapon states might attempt to obtain nuclear weapon-usable material. The chapter details some alternative diversion scenarios. A moderately industrialized NPT country with a fuel cycle that includes a reprocessing or enrichment plant decides to acquire unsafeguarded weapon-usable material. If plutonium is sought it might do so by diverting spent fuel to an undeclared reprocessing plant or by diverting plutonium direct from its safeguarded reprocessing plant. Another form of delay and obstruction would be to provoke a legal dispute and to resist the application of effective safeguards on legal grounds.
