Action 17

France has not communicated on the implementation of this action.

Under the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA) between Russia and the United States the two states have engaged in negotiations with the IAEA to verify the disposition of plutonium declared in excess of military needs. However, the verification arrangements were not completed. Russia suspended implementation of the PMDA in 2016.

Following the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), the UK placed fissile material deemed excess to defence requirements under international safeguards. This comprised 4.4 tonnes of fissile plutonium including 0.3 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium, and over 9,000 tonnes of non-highly enriched uranium, placed under European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) safeguards and made liable to inspection by the IAEA. All stocks of highly enriched uranium were retained outside safeguards as material no longer needed for nuclear weapons would be used for the naval propulsion programme. The 1998 SDR stated that “We have considered whether further disaggregation of these totals at this time would be compatible with our continuing, if reduced, security requirement. We have concluded that it would not”.

The UK confirmed in 2010 that the material it had earlier placed under Euratom safeguards is liable to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency and is stored at the Sellafield nuclear site.

Following the vote in the United Kingdom in 2016 to leave the European Union and Euratom, the UK developed its own State System of Accounting and Control (SSAC). As a member of the EU, the UK’s civil nuclear safeguards were carried out under Euratom, operating within a trilateral framework with the IAEA based on an agreement of 6 September 1976 agreement between the UK, Euratom and the IAEA.

On 29 March 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May formally triggered Article 50 in writing to European Council President Donald Tusk and began the two-year countdown to the UK formally leaving the EU. This was later extended until the UK formally left the EU on 31 January 2020 through its European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 and entered a transition period. That period ended 31 December 2020 and the UK left the EU single market and customs union.

In 2017, May established a strict ‘red line’ as part of her government’s negotiation of a withdrawal agreement that the authority of all EU law and the European Court Justice (ECJ) in the UK must end. This meant leaving Euratom because it is governed by EU institutions and the ECJ, and the government determined the UK could not remain a member without violating this mandate.

Following this decision, a new Nuclear Safeguards Bill began its passage through Parliament in January 2018. This amended the Energy Act 2013 to give the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) a new safeguards function to replace Euratom’s regulatory role. In June 2018 the UK signed two a new Voluntary Offer Agreement (VOA) and an Additional Protocol with the IAEA to replace commitments in the 1976 trilateral arrangement between the UK, IAEA and Euroatom. The VOA was later published by the IAEA as INFCIRC/951.

The UK established two statutory instruments in 2019 to operationalise the regime ahead of EU exit day on 31 December 2020: the Nuclear Safeguards (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 and the Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. These gave domestic legal effect to the new bilateral IAEA agreement and set out the UK’s nuclear material accountancy and control regime to be administered by the ONR rather than Euratom.

Throughout 2020 to 2021, the ONR continued to develop and test its material accounting system and safeguards capability, met all of the UK’s qualifying nuclear material accountancy reporting obligations, and facilitated IAEA inspections and IAEA equipment installation. From 1 January 2021 the ONR became the UK’s domestic nuclear safeguards regulator alongside its existing safety and security functions, operating under the Energy Act 2013 as amended by the Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018.

In 1996, in partnership with Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United States began a cooperative effort known as the “Trilateral Initiative,” with the goal of exploring the feasibility of a verification system for monitoring nuclear warheads and/or fissile material. Throughout the six years of the initiative, technical experts from Russia, the United States, the IAEA, and other countries were hosted at different facilities with the goal of exploring technical measures that could be applied to verification.

One of the key deliverables of the Trilateral Initiative was the development of an iterative draft Model Verification Agreement to ensure that any fissile material subject to IAEA verification under the agreements remained removed from nuclear weapon programmes. In particular, the agreement was designed to allow for a verification mechanism that would not reveal any classified information while simultaneously permitting the IAEA to verify that the material being verified was of a particular nature. The final report on the results of the Trilateral Initiative concluded that the progress made during the initiative––particularly the draft Model Verification Agreement––would provide the building blocks needed for the pursuit of bilateral verification agreements with the IAEA; however, changes in political leadership in both the United States and Russia, as well as the rise of subsequent disagreements and geopolitical tensions, eroded the landscape for continued progress on the Trilateral Initiative.