Development of the system of safeguards in the European Atomic Energy Community

Since the establishment of the European Atomic Energy Community in 1957 the Commission of the European Communities has had the task of implementing safeguards in the six (now ten) Member States of the Community on steadily increasing quantities of nuclear materials in all stages of a variety of fuel cycles. The requirements for safeguards have been evolving over this period both in the technical sense and in the structural sense. This paper provides a general review of the historical development of the Euratom safeguards system, its aims and objectives, the amounts of effort concerned, its impact upon the operators and their techniques, and the interlocking requirements of supply/co-operation agreements with third countries and of safeguards agreements with the IAEA. The supply/co-operation agreements of greatest significance in the implementation of safeguards are those with the United States of America, signed in 1958, with Canada, signed in 1959 and significantly amended in 1978 and 1981, and finally with Australia, signed in 1981. The current series of IAEA safeguards agreements relate to Belgium, Denmark, Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands (1973), a Community/IAEA/NPT Non-Nuclear-Weapon-State agreement; to the United Kingdom (1976), a Community/IAEA/NPT Weapon-State voluntary offer agreement; and to France (1978), a Community/IAEA/Weapon-State agreement structured on the lines of INFCIRC/153. In addition, the Community and certain Member States each have programmes of support to the IAEA in respect of research and development for safeguards, and within the Community there is the collaborative structure established through the European Safeguards Research and Development Association (ESARDA) which is increasingly bringing about the involvement of the industrial-scale plant operators in the development work being done to support the implementation of international safeguards