Hungary together with the European Commission, Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC), in collaboration with Japan and the United States of America celebrated on March 9 the anniversaries of their respective Support Programmes to the Department of Safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Director General of the IAEA, Yukija Amano also took part in the event. These Support Programmes strengthen IAEA safeguards by providing specific services and development work. Their main goal is to transfer technology and expertise, including development, provision and demonstration of technology, technical support, training, analysis services and human resources to the IAEA, thus contributing to the enhancement of international safeguards by improving their effectiveness and efficiency of safeguards implementation.
The event marked the anniversary of the 25 year old Hungarian Safeguards Support Programme which counts as a “junior partner” to the programme of the US (40 years old), Japan and of Euratom (35 years old). The Director General of the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority Mr. Gyula Fichtinger highlighted in his welcoming address that our programme focused on the Agency’s training objectives by hosting and developing different training activities. We have offered our expertise and facilities for the most diverse IAEA safeguards training activities. We provided facility environment for testing of newly developed or novel safeguards technologies and equipment. Activities were performed in the past using containment and surveillance equipment either for the purposes of testing traditional safeguards approaches or to be used under integrated safeguards systems. Our programme also provided the Agency with a prototype methodology for Acquisition Path Analysis based on a directed graph approach and are working on possible IT tools to support such an analysis in the frame of the State-level concept. We look forward to further collaboration with other Member States and the IAEA on the development of the State Level Concept.
(far left) Ambassador Károly Dán (Hungary), IAEA Director General Yukija Amano, (far right) HAEA Director General Gyula Fichtinger (Hungary)
The Hungarian programme is made possible by the intensive co-operation and common support of the Hungarian partner institutions among them are: the Energy Research Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, the Training Reactor of the Institute of Nuclear Techniques of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, the Public Limited Company for Radioactive Waste Management, the Ganz Engineering and Energetics Machinery Ltd.
The celebration coincided with Member States Support Progamme Cordinators’ meeting and was held at the premises of the IAEA Headquarters on March 9.