The IAEA's mission of nuclear material accountancy and timely detection of unauthorized material diversion or removal in a world with increasing use of nuclear technology requires constant development of new technologies or more efficient use of the existing technologies. Traditionally, the development of a safeguards instrument has involved IAEA staff as well as research and development institutions and the private sector. For each new set of instruments, even if they are related, the cycle begins anew usually with a different research and development institution or commercial company, and the new team does not have the benefit of the previous development since the intellectual property rights of the previous cycle reside with a different commercial company who has no incentive to share the information. In this paper we will explore the present methods of safeguards instrument development that involve research and development laboratories, the industry and the nuclear safeguards agencies, such as the IAEA or the Euratom. We propose a new strategy and framework that uses a different development paradigm than the current very safeguards specific approach. We believe that such an approach would have a better chance of sustaining manufacturing capability for this very important field than the current approach.
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