Chlorine atom verification#

In 2019, Iran alleged an IAEA inspector tested positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates while trying to visit Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear facility. Other online monitoring devices have been affected as well. Since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the deal in 2018, Iran has stopped the IAEA from accessing footage from its surveillance cameras. Since Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the IAEA has had surveillance cameras and physical inspections at Iranian sites, even as questions persist over Iran’s military nuclear program, which the agency said ended in 2003.īut that monitoring hasn’t been easy. The IAEA’s biggest operation to monitor any country’s nuclear program is Iran, where it has been the key arbiter in determining the size, scope and aspects of Tehran’s program during the decades of tensions over it. security team visited Douma, gunmen shot at them and detonated an explosive, further delaying the OPCW’s fact-finding mission. In April 2018, an OPCW team sent to collect evidence of a suspected chlorine attack in Douma, Syria, was forced to wait in a hotel for days because of security concerns in the town, which was at the time under the protection of Russian military police. Grossi, an Argentine diplomat, was previously a high-ranking official at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an organization that, after he had left, also was forced to send inspectors to conflicts. The IAEA is not the only international organization seeking to locate staff permanently in Ukraine amid the ongoing war. In Ukraine, that is further complicated by the Russian occupation of the power station. the state itself,” specifically the national nuclear regulator. “They can only advise and then it is up to. “The IAEA cannot force a country to implement or enforce nuclear safety and security standards,” Rauf said in a telephone interview. Speaking to reporters after leaving colleagues inside, he said the agency was “not moving” from the plant from now on, and vowed a “continued presence” of agency experts.īut it remains to be seen what exactly the organization can accomplish. “There were moments when fire was obvious - heavy machine guns, artillery, mortars at two or three times were really very concerning, I would say, for all of us,” he said of his team’s journey through an active war zone to reach the plant. The IAEA’s Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi highlighted the risks Thursday when he led a team to the sprawling plant in southern Ukraine. “But this situation in Zaporizhzhia, I think it’s the most serious situation where the IAEA has sent people in ever, so it’s unprecedented.”

Chlorine atom verification#

“This is not the first time that an IAEA team has gone into a situation of armed hostilities,” said Tariq Rauf, the organization’s former head of verification and security, noting that the IAEA sent inspectors to Iraq in 2003 and to former Soviet Republic Georgia during fighting. The 6-month war sparked by Russia’s invasion of its western neighbor is forcing international organizations, not just the IAEA, to deploy teams during active hostilities in their efforts to impose order around Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, pursue accountability for war crimes and identify the dead. But their deployment amid the war in Ukraine to Zaporizhzhia takes the threat to a new level and underscores the lengths to which the organization will go in attempts to avert a potentially catastrophic nuclear disaster. THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are used to risky missions - from the radioactive aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan to the politically charged Iranian nuclear program.