Efforts for appropriate responses to safeguards activities, 1; Overview

青木 里英; 白藤 雅也; 野崎 天生; 阿久津 成美*; 宮地 紀子; 中村 仁宣

Proceedings of INMM & ESARDA Joint Annual Meeting 2023 (Internet), 7 Pages, 2023/05

In order to ensure transparency in the peaceful use of nuclear materials in Japan, it is important to appropriately respond to safeguards activities conducted by the IAEA/Japan. In order to strengthen activities to appropriately respond to safeguards activities, JAEA has started the following one activity of (1) for all employees in JAEA to promote understanding and raise awareness of safeguards and three activities of (2) for the employees involved in safeguards activities to appropriately respond on-site to the activities since FY2020: (1) Education on the basis of safeguards, (2-1) Lectures, (2-2) Case studies and (2-3) Standardization of procedures related to safeguards response. In Activity (1), the employees were required to understand Safeguards framework, safeguards activities and provisions of information to Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan with developed education material, and to pass a confirmation test in FY2022. Accordingly, it was confirmed that understanding for safeguards was successfully promoted since 100% employees passed the test. In Activity (2-1), lectures were provided by experts of safeguards to make the employees reacknowledged the importance of transparency in the peaceful use of nuclear materials and the effect of inappropriate response to safeguards activities. In Activity (2-2), a material for case studies was developed including examples of inappropriate response to safeguards activities and the case studies were conducted by the employees based on the material for recognizing familiar risks of safeguards. The result of questionnaire in FY2022 indicated participants tended to become deeply understanding of familiar risk in each site through the case studies. In Activity (2-3), standard safeguards procedure for whole JAEA was developed to improve the procedures in each site based on the standard procedure and to standardize the response to safeguards throughout JAEA.