Training program to prepare the U.S. DOE laboratories for the entry into force of the protocol additional to the agreement between the United States of America and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the application of safeguards in the United
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- BNL
- U.S. DOE/NNSA
- QINETIQ-NORTH AMERICA
In 2008, a joint team from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) consisting of specialists in training IAEA inspectors in the use of complementary access activities formulated a training program to prepare the U.S DOE laboratories for the entry into force of the U.S. Additional Protocol. Since the U.S. Additional Protocol would allow for IAEA access to the DOE laboratories under the aegis of complementary access activities, the DOE laboratories would need to prepare for such visits. The goal of the training was to ensure that the DOE laboratories would successfully host an IAEA complementary access. In doing so, the labs must be able to provide the IAEA with the information that the IAEA would need to resolve its questions about the U.S. Declaration and declared activities at the lab, and also protect certain equities, as provided under the U.S. Additional Protocol Article 1.b and c. which set forth a 'National Security Exclusion.' This 'NSE' states that the AP provisions apply within the United States 'excluding only instances where its application would result in access by the Agency to activities with direct national security significance to the United States or to location or information associated with such activities.' These activities are referred to collectively as DNSS-direct national security significance. Furthermore, the U.S. has a specific right to employ managed access, without prejudice to the right under Article 1.b, in connection with activities of DNSS. The provisions in Articles 1.b and 1.c are unique to the U.S. AP, and are additional to the more general right, under Article 7, to use managed access to protect from disclosure proprietary and/or proliferation-sensitive information, and to meet safety and security requirements, that is incorporated directly from the Model Additional Protocol. The BNL-LANL team performed training at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to cover the situations that these labs, which respectively represent nuclear weapons labs, nuclear energy labs, and science labs and environmental management sites, would encounter during a complementary access. Each of the three labs hosted a mock complementary access activity, which included mock inspectors from the BNL-LANL team. In addition to reviewing the draft declarations from each of the host labs, the BNL-LANL team conducted open source research in a manner similar to what IAEA inspectors would do to research the activities at a location and prepare questions for the location to answer and that would be the focus of a complementary access. The host labs and other labs attending the training found the training to be extremely useful and helpful in making sure that each lab's Additional Protocol team had made correct declarations of nuclear activities, had properly trained staff ready to host and answer IAEA inquiries, and would implement managed access during a complementary access that would provide access by the IAEA team to resolve questions or inconsistencies about a particular declaration and still protect the information addressed by Articles 1 and 7 of the U.S. AP.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 990768
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-09-04260; LA-UR-09-4260; TRN: US1007387
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: INMM 50th Annual Meeting ; July 12, 2009 ; Tucson, AZ
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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