ABSTRACT
If the country concerned regards the plant as particularly sensitive it may require the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to examine the design information “on premises of the State” instead of transmitting it to Vienna. The country may also require the IAEA to establish a special material balance area around a commercially sensitive part of a plant, from which routine inspection is normally excluded, a so-called ‘black-box’. States are required to report changes in the inventory at each material balance area in the country and to do so no later than 30 days, after the end of the month during which the changes took place in the ‘book’ inventory or 30 days after the physical inventory was taken. The credibility of the entire safeguards operation depends in the final analysis on adequate and effective on-site inspections. The routine work of inspectors brings the IAEA into close contact with the operators of nuclear plants.
