ABACC: Its Contribution to the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy
Dr. Jorge Coll *

1. INTRODUCTION

The Argentine Republic and the Federative Republic of Brazil together constitute a region in South America covering over 11.2 million square kilometers, with some 200 million inhabitants, with a trade of some US$ 7,000 million annually.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or the region has risen to over US$ 400 million, which represents 50% of the GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean; its population accounts for 35% of this geographical area.

Both countries belong to the Mercosur South American Common Market which, together with Uruguay and Paraguay is in the process of implementation, supported by a broad-ranging spirit of cooperation among the Parties.

Nuclear cooperation between Argentina and Brazil in this region began during the 1960’s and has remain in full force until today.

Although this cooperation was not as intensive as could be wished during the 1960’s and 1970’s, it nevertheless grew strongly after 1980, when the political conditions established by the resolution of controversies over the use of water resources, led to the signature of an Agreement on the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy between the two countries.

Implementation of this Agreement includes joint developments in various fields of nuclear energy, including: the production of radioisotopes by cyclotron, the development of isotopic, radiological protection, and nuclear safety as well as recycling of fuel elements.

As a natural outcome of this cooperation and the wish to endow their nuclear programs with transparency, many commitments on the “exclusively” peaceful uses of nuclear energy have been undertaken by both nations.

These commitments were formulated in various joint declarations on nuclear policy by the Presidents of Brazil and Argentina: Foz de Iguassu, 1985; Brasilia, 1986; Viedma, 1987; Iperó, 1988; Ezeiza, 1988; and the Joint Statements of Buenos Aires, 1990 and Foz de Iguassu, 1990.

The policies outlined in these declarations finally led to the signature of a Bilateral Agreement on the Exclusively Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy on 18 July 1991.

This Bilateral Agreement entered into force on 12 December of the same year, after ratification by the Congresses of both countries.

It should be noted that said ratification implies its promulgation under force of law as established under the Agreement, and that this law imposes mandatory common compliance of both countries.

The Bilateral Agreement sets up the Common System of Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (SCCC), and the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of these materials (ABACC).

On the basis of this Bilateral Agreement, a Quadripartite Safeguards Agreement was signed in December 1991 by the Republic of Argentina, the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The adherence to the Treaty of Tlatelolco in January and May 1994 was a further step followed by both nations towards endowing transparency to their nuclear programs.

2. THE BILATERAL AGREEMENT

The basic undertakings of the bilateral Agreement are:

a) To use nuclear materials and facilities under their jurisdiction or control exclusively for peaceful purposes.

b) To prohibit and to prevent in their respective territories, and to abstain from carrying out, promoting or authorizing directly or indirectly, or from participating in any way in:

• the testing, use, manufacture, production or acquisition by any means of any nuclear weapon; and
• the receipt, storage, installation, deployment or any other form of possession of any nuclear weapon.

c) As no technical distinction can be made between nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes or for military purposes, the Parties also undertake to prohibit and prevent in their respective territories, and to abstain from carrying out, promoting or authorizing, directly or indirectly, or from participating in any way in the testing, use, manufacture, production or acquisition by any means of any nuclear explosive device while the above mentioned technical limitation exists.

As a basic control undertaking, the Parties agreed to submit all the nuclear material in all nuclear activities carried out in their territories or anywhere under their jurisdiction or control to the Common System of Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials.

The Agreement also establishes that any serious non-compliance by either of the Parties gives the other Party the right to terminate the Agreement or suspend its application, as a whole or in part, upon notification to the Secretary General of the United Nations and to the Secretary General of the Organization of American States.

3.THE COMMON SYSTEM OF ACCOUNTING AND CONTROL OF NUCLEAR MATERIAL (SCCC).

The Agreement establishes the Common System of Accounting and Control of Nuclear Material (SCCC) with the purpose of verifying that nuclear materials in all nuclear activities of the Parties are not diverted to uses not authorized under the terms of the Agreement.

The SCCC consists of the General Procedures and the Application Manuals for each installation.

The General Procedures specifies the basic criteria and the requirements of the SCCC. Chapter 1 contains the criteria and the provisions for the starting point, exemption and termination of safeguards. It also includes the general rules for establishing adequate levels of accounting and control of nuclear material, and shall later be detailed in the Application Manual for each facility or other locations, taking into account the usual parameters (nuclear material category, conversion time, inventory or annual throughput). Chapter 2 establishes the requirements at the state level for nuclear facilities and the other locations licensing the requirements regarding relevant information for the SCCC (records, physical inventory and traceability of the measurement systems). Chapter 3 describes the procedures for the application of the SCCC at state level.

The provision for the application of the SCCC by ABACC are in Chapter 4. It includes the requirements on the relevant information that shall be provided to ABACC (DIQ, ICR, MBR, PIL, notification of transfers from, to or between the State Parties). Additionally, Chapter 4 describes in a general way the purposes of ABACC inspections, the scope of the inspections, the access for and the notice of inspections. The general provision for the evaluation of the shipper-receiver differences and the MUF are also included in this Chapter.

The remaining Chapters refer to the following: Chapter 5: ABACC inspectors; Chapter 6: revision of the document; Chapter 7: interim provisions, and Chapter 8: Definitions.

4.THE BRAZILIAN-ARGENTINE AGENCY FOR ACCOUNTING AND CONTROL OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS (ABACC)

For the purpose of applying the SCCC in both countries, the Agreement also establishes the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC).

This Agreement endows ABACC with the characteristics of an International Agency and its employees assume the status of international staff. Their privileges and immunities are established in an additional protocol to the Agreement, in the corresponding Headquarters Agreement signed with the Government of Brazil, and in a special Agreement signed with the Government of the Argentine Republic.

The organs of the ABACC are the Commission, its governing body consisting of four members appointed by the Parties, each Government appointing two, and the Secretariat - its executive body.

The main functions of the Commission are:

• to monitor the functioning of the SCCC and approve the General Procedures and related documents
• to supervise the functioning of the Secretariat
• to appoint or approve the staff of the Secretariat
• to prepare a list of qualified inspectors from among those proposed by the Parties
• to inform the Party concerned of any anomalies which may arise in the implementation of the SCCC
• to report to the Parties every year on the implementation of the SCCC
• to inform the Parties of non-compliance by either of them with the commitments made under the Agreement.

The decisions of the Commission may only be taken by a unanimous vote of its members.

Any anomaly noted as a result of the inspections or through the appraisal of the national records, should be advised by the Secretariat to the Commission, which should advise the Party concerned to rectify the situation.

The Secretariat has the following functions:

• to implement the directives and instructions issued by the Commission
• to perform the necessary activities for the implementation and administration of the SCCC
• to act as the representative of the ABACC
• to designate and instruct the inspectors who will carry out the inspections
• to receive and evaluate the inspection reports
• to inform the Commission immediately of any discrepancy in the records of either of the Parties, which emerges from the evaluation of the inspection results.

The Secretariat consists of a Secretary and a Deputy Secretary (whose nationalities alternate every year) and a staff of - presently - eight senior Technical Officers (four for each Party), two Administrative Officers, three Administrative Auxiliaries, and about sixty part-time inspectors provided by the Parties (thirty from each country) who only report to the Agency while carrying out their inspection duties.

The inspectors are experts usually working for the National Authorities or other official organization in each country, and they are convoked by ABACC’s Secretariat whenever necessary. It should be emphasized that the inspection staff is formed not only by experienced people that perform inspections at a national level, but also by experts in several areas of safeguards (NDA, DA, design and nuclear installation operations, etc.).

The organic structure of the Secretariat consists of a Technical Unit and an Administrative-Financial Unit. The former includes the following Areas:

• Accounting of nuclear materials
• Planning and Evaluation
• Operations, and
• Technical support

The two Governments contribute equally to ABACC’s financial support, and it must be pointed out that this is a legal obligation for both Parties, enforced by law.

The annual budget of ABACC is around US$2 million, which does not include the wages of the inspectors and consultants, which are borne directly by the countries; nor does it include the purchase of equipment, which is carried out under special arrangements. A program of around US$ 1.5 million has been settled for this purpose, providing US $150,000 for 1992, US $500,000 for 1993 and US $500,000 for 1994, under which the following equipments had been purchased:

Gamma equipment	Other equipment
4 HM-4	12 Load Cells 0.5, 1 and 5 ton
5 Davidson MCAs	1 Cerenkov vision device
2 Ortec MCAs	2 Ultrasonic thickness gauge
2 Ge detectors	40 UF6 sampling cylinder
8 NaI detectors	Several analytical standards
6 Colimators (NaI detectors)	Sets of Standard weights
2 Sets of calibration sources	(1g to 20kg)

5. THE QUADRIPARTITE AGREEMENT

The Agreement for the Exclusively Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy was complemented by a Quadripartite Agreement between the two Governments, the ABACC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), concluded on December 13, 1991 in Vienna, Austria, by virtue of which IAEA also assumes the responsibility of applying full safeguards in both countries.

The basic undertakings of this Agreement are:

a) The acceptance by the State Parties of safeguards, in accordance with the terms of the Agreement, on all nuclear materials in all nuclear activities within their territories, under their jurisdiction or carried out under their control anywhere, for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other explosive devices.

b) Furthermore, the Agency shall have the right and the obligation to ensure that safeguards will be applied, in accordance with the terms of the Agreement, on all nuclear materials in all nuclear activities within the territories of the State Parties, under their jurisdiction or carried out under their control anywhere, for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other explosive devices.

ABACC undertakes, in applying its safeguards on nuclear material in all nuclear activities within the territories of the State Parties, to cooperate with the Agency, in accordance with the terms of the Agreement, with a view to ascertaining that such nuclear material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other explosive devices.

The Agency shall apply its safeguards in such a manner as to enable it to verify, in ascertaining that there has been no diversion of nuclear material to any nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device the findings of the SCCC. The Agency’s verification shall include, inter alia, independent measurements and observations conducted by the Agency, in accordance with the procedures specified in the Agreement. The Agency, in its verification, shall take due account of the technical effectiveness of the SCCC.

c) The State Parties, ABACC and the Agency shall cooperate to facilitate the implementation of the safeguards provided for in the Agreement.

ABACC and the Agency shall avoid unnecessary duplication of safeguards activities.

The fact that the date when the SCCC came into force and the ABACC was implemented took place after signature of the Quadripartite Agreement, provided for future relationships to be taken into consideration as well as for the necessary complementary action between ABACC and the IAEA, for application of safeguards arising therefrom.

It should be noted that under the Quadripartite Agreement, the States Parties comply with the requirements of Article 13 of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which determines that each Party shall negotiate multilateral or bilateral agreements with the IAEA for the application of safeguards to its nuclear activities.

The General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements to the Quadripartite Agreement has been negotiated on this basis and assigns ABACC an active role in the implementation of the Agreement.

One of the chapters of this document refers to “Arrangements between ABACC and the IAEA for the cooperation in the application of safeguards under the Agreement” which foresees that both Agencies will meet before and after each inspection, to discuss detailed inspection plan and activities for each facility, distribution of tasks, instruments logistics, sample plan and follow-up actions. Also foreseen in this document, are the more generic regular meeting, which shall occur as necessary and normally every two year, to discuss subjects such as inspection criteria, safeguards approaches and the States Parties nuclear programs, joint activities including equipment sharing and containment and surveillance.

According to this document, ABACC shall inform the IAEA annually of its inspection methods and shall provide the IAEA with its inspection reports.

The first draft of Facility Attachments for the facilities subject only to the SCCC before the entry into force of the Quadripartite Agreement, shall be prepared by ABACC and submitted to the IAEA and the State Party concerned, for negotiation.

The Quadripartite Agreement as well as the General Part of its Subsidiary Arrangements entered into force on March 4,1994.

6.STATE OF IMPLEMENTATION

During the first months of 1992, efforts were devoted to obtaining the resources (premises, staff, financial supports, etc.) and to preparing the necessary regulations for the operation of the ABACC and the implementation of the SCCC.

The Headquarters Agreement between the Federative Republic of Brazil and ABACC was signed on March 27, 1992 and by the end of June the ABACC began to function in its headquarters at Avenida Rio Branco 123 - 5th. floor, in the City of Rio de Janeiro.

Early in September 1992, the ABACC received the statements on the initial inventories (as of 30 of June) of nuclear material in all nuclear activities in each country, to be submitted to the SCCC.

Considering that both countries had at that time nuclear material under IAEA safeguards (INFCIRC/66 agreements), the Secretariat decided to assign priority to the control of the nuclear materials submitted only to the SCCC.

With the adoption of this policy, all nuclear material in both countries would be then totally under safeguards, either those of ABACC or the IAEA. This objective has been achieved by the end of 1993, when the main verification activities have been completed.

The main technical activities initially performed by the ABACC to implement the SCCC, may be summarized as follows:

a) Verification activities: the verification of the full initial inventory and the checking of all the Technical Questionnaires of the installations was completed in December 1993, with an inspection effort in the order of 400 persons-day per year.

b) Planning activities: development of safeguards approaches, with 12 Application Manuals agreed at the end of 1993.

c) Accounting: a data base has been organized to record the initial inventory and the accounting reports submitted by the countries thereafter; the reporting system foreseen in the SCCC has been fully implemented by the beginning of 1994.

d) Destructive measurements: as foreseen in the Bilateral Agreement, the services on sample analysis would be provided by the Parties and ABACC policy requires that samples taken in Argentina shall be analyzed in Brazil and vice-versa; for that purpose, a program to implement a network of analytical laboratories in both countries started in the beginning of 1993, with the necessary inter calibration program, having the participation of IAEA Safeguards Analytical Laboratory and the New Brunswick Laboratory of the United States; arrangements have been made to facilitate the transport of safeguards equipment and samples between both countries.

e) Training of inspectors: two introductory seminars took place in 1992, one in Argentina and the other in Brazil; two training courses have been carried out with the support of the ABACC, the first one in June 1993, organized by the Argentine National Authority, and the second one in October 1994 organized by the Brazilian National Authority; a project has been signed with the United States Department of Energy, to run workshops hands-on training for ABACC inspectors.

When the Quadripartite Agreement entered into force, the situation of the MBAs under ABACC safeguards were as shown in the following table, remaining presently the same:

Type	Argentina	Brazil	Total
Conversion facilities	7	1	8
Enrichment facilities	1	2	3
Fuel fabrication facilities	3	1	4
Power reactors	2	1	3
Research reactors	5	3	8
R&D facilities	1	3	4
Critical/sub critical units		3	3
Storage facilities	3	2	5
LOFs on fuel research	3	5	8
LOFs on reprocessing research		1	1
LOFs analytical laboratory	3	2	5
Other LOFs	11	7	18
TOTAL	39	31	70

As required by article 60 of the Quadripartite Agreement, ABACC dispatched to the IAEA in April 1994, the Initial Report on the inventory of nuclear material to be submitted to the Agreement, in each State Party. By August the same year, the Design Information Questionnaires for all facilities and other locations in both States have already been dispatched to the IAEA.

The first draft Facility Attachments for 23 out of 25 facilities or other locations that should be prepared by ABACC has already been completed and sent to the Agency and to the States Parties. The remaining two are almost finalized and shall be submitted to the Parties in the following months.

The verification of the Initial Report began in June 1994. As mentioned before, in the beginning of the implementation of the SCCC, ABACC concentrated its efforts in the MBAs submitted only to the SCCC, having completed this phase by the end of 1993. In the beginning of 1994 the initial inventory (as declared under the SCCC) and the design information, for some few MBAs that were under IAEA safeguards in connection with INFCIRC/66 type agreements, had already been verified by ABACC. With the entry into force of the Quadripartite Agreement, when the IAEA started the verification of the Initial Report and design information for all MBAs, ABACC inspection program was coordinated with that of the IAEA and as from June 1994, almost all the inspections have been made jointly by ABACC and the Agency.

The first inspection mission under the Quadripartite Agreement started on June 1994, including in both countries, the verification of the Initial Report in 22 MBAs and of the Design Information Questionnaire (DIQ) in 11 MBAs, in a total of 78 persons-day of inspection (for ABACC inspectors).

From June to October other ad-hoc inspections have been made to 35 MBAs, including the verification of DIQ (or checking of the Technical Questionnaire) in most of them and the verification of initial inventory in a few, in a total of 183 persons-day of inspection (for ABACC).

The last set of inspections have been done in November 1994, with an inspection effort of 180 persons-day of inspection (for ABACC).

As a result of all these inspections, the verification of the Initial Report is practically completed, pending certain activities in three reactors, one storage and the hold-up of an enrichment facility. The status of verification is the same with regard to the DIQs for all facilities, for which some activities have to be completed for the sensitive facilities and some updating were required to be done in the DIQs for a few other facilities.

7. CONCLUSIONS

The description of the efforts made by Brazil and Argentina to set up a Common System for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials, the conception of ABACC to administer this, and the level of implementation achieved over the short period of time available, show the possibility of successfully establishing regional systems for the application of safeguards.

The signature of the Quadripartite Agreement and the progress achieved with the IAEA in the implementation thereof, emphasizes the feasibility of these systems playing a major role, and contributing to the peaceful uses of the nuclear energy.

* Biographic Note

Actualmente es el Secretario Adjunto de la Agencia Brasileño-Argentina de Contabilidad y Control de Materiales Nucleares (ABACC).

En 1989, fue miembro del Directorio de la CNEA y hasta diciembre de 1991 fue Asesor del mismo.

Fue Director de Proyectos Internacionales de CNEA y Jefe del Proyecto para la construcción del Centro Peruano de Investigaciones Nucleares.

Experto en Cooperación Técnica del Organismo Internacional de Energía Atómica (OIEA).

Fue Presidente de ENACE, S.A. (Empresa Nuclear Argentina de Centrales Eléctricas).

Fue colaborador extranjero en el "Comisariado de Energía Atómica" en Francia entre 1965 y 1966.

En 1955 ingresó a la Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica (CNEA).

El Dr. Jorge A. Coll es Licenciado y Doctor en Química en la Universidad de Buenos Aires y cursó estudios de posgrado en la Universidad de Birmingham en Inglaterra.