New Perspectives on Nuclear Verification

by Natalia Luers (University of Trento and Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy)

ABACC, the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials, was created after Argentina and Brazil shifted from nuclear rivalry to cooperation, turning their foreign-policy convergence into a verification-based mechanism that reinforced Latin America’s peace. In 1991, after both countries returned to democracy after the end of military rule, they formalised their cooperation through ABACC to ensure the international community and each other that all nuclear material and facilities in their territories would only be used for peaceful purposes. United in their opposition to the NPT, viewed as the epitome of unfairness and injustice in the global nuclear order, a system of double standards restricting NNWS access to nuclear technology, they recognised the strategic opportunity to build mutual trust in their nuclear programmes and later integrate into the global system as one front.

Grounded in the “neighbour-watching neighbour” principle, ABACC was born through a bottom-up and top-down trust-building process. Ideas of the Brazilian and Argentine scientific communities reached their respective national executive spheres, while decision-makers channelled their coordinated views on a nuclear-control regime through nuclear cooperation agreements, working groups, scientists’ exchanges, consultations, and visits. This epistemic community exerted a founding influence in the creation of ABACC by shaping nuclear decision-making in Argentina and Brazil. While scientists designed the mutual safeguards inspection regime, government officials supported the vision and later codified a policy framework for mutual inspections.

Despite some experts’ hesitation on the potential for replicating ABACC’s institutional model elsewhere, some of its techniques and resources could be applied in a scalable, practical manner to other regions’ trust-building processes. On the one hand, the ABACC-Cristallini Method’s preliminary results represent a new uranium hexafluoride collection sampling method with less transportation-related dangers: lower radioactivity level and radiological risks, and no risks of uranium release. Through this method’s verified results, ABACC guarantees to Argentina, Brazil, and the international community its members’ compliance with the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The United States and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) laboratories are subjecting it to a validation process to extend its utilisation to uranium hexafluoride facilities and control agencies.

On the other hand, ABACC’s indigenous expertise could also be fundamental in developing a nuclear disarmament verification Inspectorate to support future treaty verification. Its expertise in destructive and non-destructive analysis, remote monitoring, environmental sampling, containment and surveillance, and information management could serve nuclear disarmament verification establishment purposes in disarmament activities. ABACC could also serve as a testing ground for incorporating new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and new physics processes, due to the established mutual trust between the two states. In a similar vein, amidst global trends towards higher nuclear safeguards standards and the global rise of nuclear activities, WMD non-proliferation experts identified an opportunity for ABACC: evolving its binational original mandate to verify the absence of undeclared nuclear activities and nuclear material in the region by assuming IAEA responsibilities, thereby removing its safeguards burden.

ABACC’s unique technical and scientific expertise has been shaped by its distinct historical development, creative thinking, and a strong political will. These factors have significantly contributed to the region’s success in nuclear verification and to ABACC’s global credibility as a respected, science-based voice in the nuclear field. An asset that some argue would allow ABACC to extend its influence by directly supporting the IAEA’s verification duties at the regional level.

Natalia Luers is a master’s candidate in International Security Studies at the University of Trento and Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa. She is currently a Mentee at the Young Women in Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme, co-established by the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation and the International Affairs Institute.
Previously, she interned at OPANAL, the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, in Mexico City, supporting the preparation of the Agency’s position for the Third Meeting of the TPNW and the Third NPT Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference.