In brief
On 10 November, the IAEA launched its 15th Safeguards Symposium in Vienna, emphasizing innovation, resilience and shared responsibility amid rapid technological and geopolitical shifts. The event, attended by roughly 1,000 delegates from over 100 nations, highlighted progress in industry collaboration, the COMPASS training initiative and extensive field verification activities. Key questions remain about sustaining safeguards resilience and the evolving role of nuclear technology in global security.
The International Atomic Energy Agency opened its 15th Symposium on International Safeguards in Vienna on 10 November, with about 1,000 participants representing more than 100 countries and 20 international organisations, according to Xinhua.
The event aimed to review the current state of safeguards, assess challenges brought by rapid technological change and shifting geopolitics, and to chart a path forward for the agency’s supervisory system.
Background and Context
Since the previous symposium in 2022, the safeguards environment has experienced rapid advances in nuclear technology, a renewed interest in nuclear energy for climate goals, and heightened security risks that threaten field verification operations, Xinhua reported.
In the agency’s opening statement, Massimo Aparo, deputy director general for the Department of Safeguards, underscored the need for “innovation, resilience and shared responsibility,” highlighting how the operating environment is testing the safeguards system’s robustness.
“Our operating environment is undergoing significant changes that are testing our resilience and challenging us to be more innovative,” Aparo said.
Aparo called on policymakers, industry stakeholders, civil society and the safeguard workforce to maintain a resilient system that can meet current and future demands, per Xinhua’s coverage.
The agency cited several concrete gains since the last symposium, including closer collaboration with industry and regulators to design nuclear technologies with safeguards embedded, the successful completion of the first regular cycle of the comprehensive capacity‑building initiative COMPASS, and the continued development of inspection equipment, Xinhua said.
In 2025 the IAEA conducted nearly 3,000 in‑field verifications in 191 states, collected over 1,000 samples, maintained about 1,400 surveillance cameras, acquired more than 2,800 commercial satellite images and verified over 24,000 seals, the agency noted in a video shown during the opening session.
While these statistics demonstrate operational reach, experts at the symposium questioned whether current verification tools can keep pace with increasingly sophisticated proliferation techniques and potential cyber threats, a point raised by several participants but not at an agency level.
Participants also debated how to balance the agency’s mission with national sovereignty concerns, especially as more states seek independent verification mechanisms and as the geopolitical climate continues to shift, Xinhua reported.
Looking ahead, the IAEA outlined plans to further integrate industry input into safeguards design, to expand the COMPASS training network, and to deploy advanced sensor and imaging technologies to enhance real‑time verification, according to the agency’s program overview presented during the symposium.
The symposium’s closing session reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to a resilient, innovative safeguards system built on shared responsibility, with the next symposium slated for 2028, Xinhua noted.
