A program to establish environmental sample analysis techniques for safeguards

An environmental sample analysis method was introduced as an important measure for the strengthened safeguards based on the 93+2 program of the IAEA. This is a new measure with the aim of technically detecting undeclared nuclear activities, which enables us to verify the operation of a facility and/or to detect suspicious activities by sampling environmental samples within or outside the facility or from other places and by analyzing isotopic compositions of a minute amount of nuclear material contained in the samples. In order to maintain the independent verification scheme of the safeguards system of Japan, it is essential to establish a new function of analyzing environmental samples taken for safeguards and evaluating the results obtained. Namely, it is necessary to prepare a clean chemistry laboratory with clean rooms of high cleanliness and to develop environmental sample analysis techniques using the laboratory. JAERI commended investigative work for such purposes in 1996. In this paper, the current status and problems to be addressed are described. (author)