Can international safeguards be expanded to cover tritium?

Effective international control of tritium does not yet exist although there are several arguments in favour of it. A precedent is given by an agreement between Euratom and Canada. The paper discusses whether the necessary political and technical preconditions for such control are fulfilled. For this purpose an international tritium control system (ITCS) has been outlined. The goal is to avoid any undeclared tritium uses originating from civilian facilities. The rules and verification procedures of the ITCS are comparable to those agreed upon for plutonium and highly enriched uranium in the NPT. Therefore, the paper discusses the possibility of tying an international tritium control to the NPT, as an integral part or additional protocol. The required verification measures as obtained by a comprehensive diversion path analysis entail the verification of non-production and of non-removal form existing and declared inventories of tritium in civilian facilities. The technical feasibility of verification is assessed and compared to the standards agreed upon for nuclear safeguards. For the assessment the significant quantity of tritium is assumed to be one gram; a detection time of one year should suffice. (author). 13 refs, 1 tab