Steps of Ukrainian SSAC to Integrated Safeguards

Strengthening of SSAC is a necessary condition for application of integrated safeguards. Ukrainian State System has been working since 1994 and passed several stages in its development: At the early stage it allowed us to conclude the first Safeguards Agreement; In 2003 SSAC covered also all nuclear material at locations outside facilities; In 2006 Additional Protocol (AP) entered into force. The significant contribution to strengthening of SSAC has been made by ISSAS mission carried out in Ukraine in 2007. The mission helped us to evaluate the State Safeguards System, provided us recommendations on improving of legislation, in particular to establish the system of personnel training. Cooperation between the IAEA and Ukrainian SSAC is carried out in following directions. Annual meeting of Safeguards Implementation Review Group takes place in Kiev. Participants discuss current tasks or problem issues of Safeguards implementation and work out Action Plan in order to resolve a problem or find a way for improving situation. Ukrainian State inspectors organize and take part in each IAEA inspection and complementary access. Ukraine has got considerable experience in the AP implementation, to a certain extent determined by peculiarities of Ukraine as a former part of a nuclear weapon state. For 5 years we have accumulated a significant amount of AP information and it became a problem to keep track of it. Due to Protocol Reporter software has limited possibilities there was a need to develop additional software for AP information management. The transmission of encrypted data on nuclear materials from surveillance systems installed at all NPPs directly to the IAEA Headquarters has started recently. Since September 2010 the IAEA plans to use these data for drawing conclusion of safeguards implementation that will allow to reduce the number of IAEA inspections to the Ukrainian NPPs. While implementing the AP we got a question about correspondence of efforts spent for accounting of items containing less than one gram of nuclear material (like smoke detectors, neutron detectors and sources) comparing at all nuclear activities of Ukraine. Also it is impossible to apply traditional safeguards to Chernobyl Shelter and in the terms of AP it has to be treated as a location of high-level waste containing nuclear material. Nevertheless, we believe that Ukraine is ready for application of integrated safeguards. (author)