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Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Trade and Security

Nuclear Trade and Security

Nuclear Exports and Safeguards

Australia's Network of Nuclear Safeguards Agreements

All of Australia's uranium is exported for exclusively peaceful purposes, and only to countries and parties with which Australia has a bilateral safeguards Agreement. These Agreements ensure that Australia's nuclear exports remain in exclusively peaceful use, and may only be retransferred to a party with a bilateral safeguards Agreement with Australia.

Australia’s network of bilateral safeguards Agreements complements and builds upon the IAEA’s safeguards regime. They establish treaty-level conditions on the use of all nuclear material exported from Australia.

IAEA safeguards are generally not concerned with origin attribution. Australia’s bilateral safeguards Agreements serve as a mechanism to apply specific conditions on Australian Obligated Nuclear Material (AONM) which are additional to IAEA safeguards, for instance, with regard to retransfers, high enrichment and reprocessing. Each of Australia’s bilateral safeguards Agreements is supplemented by its own Administrative Arrangement, a confidential document of less than treaty status between Australia and the other country which establishes procedures to ensure the smooth implementation of the provisions of the bilateral Agreement.

Australia's safeguards policy also involves the careful selection of countries which are eligible to receive Australian uranium exports. In the case of non-nuclear-weapon states, they must be subject to IAEA fullscope safeguards (i.e. IAEA safeguards apply to all existing and future nuclear activities). In the case of nuclear-weapon states, there must be a treaty level assurance that AONM will only be used for peaceful purposes, and that AONM will be covered by IAEA safeguards.

The Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office (ASNO), besides acting as Australia’s national safeguards authority - responsible for Australia's NPT safeguards Agreement with the IAEA - also operates Australia’s system of bilateral safeguards Agreements, and accounts for nuclear material through administering the Nuclear Non-Proliferation (Safeguards) Act 1987

Australia currently has 22 bilateral safeguards Agreements in force covering 39 countries:

Country

Date of Entry into Force

Republic of Korea (ROK)

2 May 1979

United Kingdom

24 July 1979

Finland

9 February 1980

United States of America

16 January 1981

Canada

9 March 1981

Sweden

22 May 1981

France

12 September 1981

Euratom 1

15 January 1982

Philippines

11 May 1982

Japan

17 August 1982

Switzerland

27 July 1988

Egypt

2 June 1989

Russian Federation2

24 December 1990

Mexico

17 July 1992

New Zealand

14 September 1999

United States (covering cooperation on Silex Technology)

24 May 2000

Czech Republic

17 May 2002

USA covering supply to Taiwan, China

17 May 2002

Hungary

15 June 2002

Argentina

12 January 2005

People’s Republic of China

3 February 2007

Notes:

1.      Euratom is the atomic energy agency of the European Union.  The Euratom agreement covers all 27 member states.

2.      The 1990 Australia-Russia Agreement (concluded with the former USSR) covers the processing (conversion, enrichment or fuel fabrication) of AONM in Russia on behalf of other partner countries, but does not permit the use of AONM by Russia.  The new Australia-Russia Agreement, signed on 7 September 2007, has not yet entered into force.

The above list does not include Australia’s NPT safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, concluded on 10 July 1974. In addition to the above Agreements, Australia also has an Exchange of Notes constituting an Agreement with Singapore Concerning Cooperation on the Physical Protection ofNuclear Materials, which entered into force on 15 December 1989.

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