The proliferation of nuclear weapons is a great threat to world peace and
stability. The question of strengthening the nonproliferation regime has been open for a
long period of time. In 1997 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of
Governors (BOG) adopted the Additional Safeguards Protocol. The purpose of the
protocol is to enhance the IAEA’s ability to detect undeclared production of fissile
materials in member states. However, the IAEA does not always have sufficient human
and financial resources to accomplish this task. Developed here is a concept for making
use of human and technical resources available in academia that could be used to
enhance the IAEA’s mission.
The objective of this research was to study the feasibility of an academic
community using commercially or publicly available sources of information and
products for the purpose of detecting covert facilities and activities intended for the
unlawful acquisition of fissile materials or production of nuclear weapons. In this study,
the availability and use of commercial satellite imagery systems, commercial computer
codes for satellite imagery analysis, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)verification International Monitoring System (IMS), publicly available information
sources such as watchdog groups and press reports, and Customs Services information
were explored. A system for integrating these data sources to form conclusions was also
developed. The results proved that publicly and commercially available sources of
information and data analysis can be a powerful tool in tracking violations in the
international nuclear nonproliferation regime and a framework for implementing these
tools in academic community was developed.
As a result of this study a formation of an International Nonproliferation
Monitoring Academic Community (INMAC) is proposed. This would be an independent
organization consisting of academics (faculty, staff and students) from both nuclear
weapon states (NWS) and non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). This community
analyzes all types of unclassified publicly and commercially available information to aid
in detection of violations of the non-proliferation regime. INMAC shares all of this
information with the IAEA and the public. Since INMAC is composed solely by
members of the academic community, this organization would not demonstrate any
biases in its investigations or reporting.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1946 |
| Date | 02 June 2009 |
| Creators | Solodov, Alexander |
| Contributors | Charlton, William S. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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