IAEA Symposium on International Safeguards

Nuclear Safeguards Communication in Thailand

7 Nov 2018, 09:20

5m

M2 (Vienna International Centre)

Roundtable Member Addressing Growing Safeguards Challenges (CHA) [CHA] Engaging Non-Traditional Sectors in Safeguards

Speaker

Dr Boonchawee Srimok (Office of Atoms for Peace)

Description

The Kingdom of Thailand has NPT, CSA and AP inforce since 1972, 1974, and 2017 respectively. Safeguards implementation has been performed ever since mostly in the form of providing and receiving of information, i.e. NMA reports, Notification letters and Forms. Safeguards relevant communication between State authority responsible for safeguards implementation (SRA) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is one of key elements for an effective safeguards implementation. Office of Atoms for Peace (OAP) acts on behalf of the Kingdom of Thailand or Thailand as SRA. In the past, OAP has provided any type of information through official channel, i.e. OAP to Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Permanent Mission in Vienna and to IAEA, and vice versa for information from IAEA to OAP. These involve paper base documentation and traditional logistics such as air mail and FAX. Unfortunate experiences were late submission and risks of expose of sensitive or confidential information. IAEA has developed Computerized Secure Communication (SC) as a platform to exchange information between States and IAEA for certain period of time. In 2017 IAEA has launch the State Declaration Portal (SDP) as a complementary platform to SC to exchange information between States and IAEA. OAP has just installed SC last year in November and has been granted access to SDP in July 2017. By utilizing SDP and SC, OAP is able to (a) shorten the information submission time to IAEA drastically and (b) receive information by IAEA almost instantly. The systems also allow restricted access by State parties to receive a copy or a notification of the copy of information at the time of the information is exchange. Advantages using this two systems include (a) reducing risk of unnecessary sharing sensitive and confidential information (b) significantly decreasing logistic time between OAP and IAEA which is preferable in submitting AP declarations that IAEA will acknowledge the submission by the IAEA “Receive” time and not “dispatch” time like NMA reports.