Abstract
Since many clandestine nuclear activities in the Middle East, the Korean peninsula and other areas of the world have been disclosed during the last 15 years, a series of the counter-measures have been proposed and taken. The Destructive Analysis (DA) for environmental sampling for safeguards (ESS), based on the Additional Protocol to the NPT Safeguards Agreement has played very important role since 1990s. It is designed to detect nuclear materials in the environment of a facility that may reveal the presence of an undeclared nuclear activity such as plutonium recovery from irradiated fuel or isotopic enrichment of uranium. Among the verification tools for the comprehensive Safeguards agreement, DA for nuclear material accountancy and its verification is extremely important for drawing quantitative Safeguards conclusions. In particular, DA is the best approach for detecting "bias defects", which arise when small amounts of nuclear material are diverted over a protracted length of time. Nuclear accountancy and verification based on the DA with a state-of-the-art determination technique providing highest possible measurement accuracy is the fundamental and essential technology, without which Safeguards cannot be concluded. Timely and more accurate analytical services are current challenges against getting larger scale of nuclear fuel cycle. This paper describes the role of DA for both environmental sampling and verification of nuclear material accountancy.
