IAEA Symposium on International Safeguards

APPLICATION OF SAFEGUARDS IN VENEZUELA THROUGH PROTOCOLS WITH SMALL QUANTITIES

Not scheduled

1m

M Building (Vienna International Centre)

Contributor (Panel Session) Shaping the future of safeguards implementation (SGI) [SGI] Establishing and Strengthening State and Regional Systems

Speaker

Mr OMAR VASQUEZ (General Directorate of Atomic Energy - Venezuela)

Description

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) promotes in its Member States the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and radioactive materials, proposing mechanisms based on the provisions of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which provide guarantees and avoid the diversion of this type of material that can be used in weapons and other explosive devices.

The non-nuclear-weapon States, which have established protocols in their Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements with the IAEA, generally possess quantities of depleted uranium used as shielding in the activities of the medical and industrial sector and therefore do not maintain compliance with certain procedures that are included in the Safeguards Agreements. However, they must cooperate in its application and provide guarantees that they respect their Safeguards commitments. For these cases, the mechanism called Small Quantity Protocols (SQPs) has been established, with the purpose of reducing the burden of applying the Safeguards and maintaining the integrity of the accounting system of nuclear material.

Venezuela signed a Comprehensive Safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1982, which presented the initial report of the existing material in a Research Facility that is inspected annually by Safeguards, but the accounting system of nuclear material did not consider the use of nuclear materials in the activities in the medical and industrial sector. In this sense, at the initiative of the National Regulatory Authority, the registration of the information required by Safeguards was proposed regarding the material associated with the locations outside of facilities (LOFs), using PPC, supported by existing synergies in the regulatory system that considers the technological and physical security, in the control of the unauthorized use of nuclear materials and radioactive sources.