Nuclear Safety, Safeguards and Security–Strengthening the Global Nuclear Order

As the IAEA Director General Emeritus, Hans Blix put it “A nuclear accident anywhere is an accident everywhere”. Fukushima revealed that no one state is immune from fallacies that resulted both before and after the nuclear accident. That will be also true with any nuclear terrorism event, which we have been spared thus far.

Safeguards, security and safety (Triple S) are commonly seen as separate areas in nuclear governance. While there are technical and legal reasons to justify this, they also co-exist and are mutually reinforcing in many ways. Safety, security and safeguards are close ‘triplets’ that have synergetic effects on one another, and contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall nuclear order. For instance, near real-time nuclear material accountancy, together with monitoring systems, provide valuable information about the location and status of nuclear material. This in turn is useful for nuclear security measures. Similarly, such information serves to benefit nuclear safety by contributing as input to criticality controls and locations of nuclear materials.