Having reviewed the historical development of U.S. safeguards against nuclear theft and examined the content of current AEC requirements, we may now step back from the details in order to address some basic questions about how the AEC is tackling this area of its statutory responsibilities. These questions concern the organization, procedures, substance, and level of effort devoted to safeguards.

Organization

Safeguards constitute a major policy problem without an institutional focus anywhere in the U.S. government. Currently, the regulatory aspects are separate from the small research and development program. The critics of nuclear power have faulted the AEC's organization because it merged promotional and regulatory functions. The criticism led eventually to an administrative separation of the two branches of the AEC's activities, and proposals for a legislative divorce are pending. The safeguards research and development program, however, is not a promotional activity. Rather, it should provide the technical foundation for an important regulatory program. Therefore, in the safeguards area, research and development and regulatory efforts could be intimately related without engendering a conflict of interest within a single government agency.

Moreover, the program to develop a U.S. national safeguards system is in danger of growing away from the development of international safeguards policy. The primary purpose of international safeguards is to detect governmentally authorized nuclear diversion, while the primary purpose of a national safeguards system is to prevent nuclear theft. Nevertheless, nuclear theft must be prevented wherever opportunities exist, and the problem is rapidly taking on global dimensions. While the distinction between national and international elements should be preserved in any organizational approach to nuclear safeguards, the transcendent character of the problem should be recognized and the elements should be fully coordinated.

In addition to the unfocused and diffused character of the U.S. safeguards program a major institutional defect within the government has been the absence of involvement at the political level. Until very recently, issues related to the national safeguards system were rarely considered at the Commission level within the AEC. There are hopeful signs that this situation is beginning to change. However, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy of the Congress made its first brief inquiry into the adequacy of safeguards against nuclear theft at hearings devoted mainly to reactor safety in September 1973.