Odette Jankowitsch-Prevor joined the IAEA in 1987, the year after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She recalls the following years as the most productive time in writing international nuclear law and takes us back to the negotiations of the four main nuclear safety conventions.
Interview: Vienna, 24 April 2015 [more]

As the first female inspector in a senior position, Shirley Johnson chronicles the major steps in her career in the Department of Safeguards up until overseeing the Rokkasho Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Facility project in Japan. She describes the Department of Safeguards' relationships to other Agency departments, and explains why these changed in the early 1990s.
Interview: Vienna, 20 August 2015 [more]

William Lichliter worked at the IAEA between 1981 and 2007. He chronicles the organizational changes in the Department of Safeguards after the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor in Iraq. From the computer revolution to a modernized hiring process, he provides insight into managing safeguards over time.
Interview: Vienna, 13 March 2015 [more]

From 2008 to 2014, Marco Marzo was the Director of Operations A, Department of Safeguards. By detailing South America and the changing Argentine-Brazilian relations in the 1990s, Marzo recalls how these changes affected both countries’ nuclear relations, and led to successful negotiations between the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) and the IAEA.
Interview: Washington, D.C., 19 November 2015 [more]

From 1995 to 2011, Ambassador Abdul Minty was the South African Governor at the IAEA Board of Governors. In this interview, he also takes us back to his earlier involvement with the Agency. For over two decades he worked closely with the African Group, the Non-Aligned Movement, and other members of the IAEA regarding South Africa’s nuclear program, and aimed to achieve sanctions and the exclusion of the apartheid regime from the Board of Governors.
Interview: Berlin, 1 September 2016 [more]

Merle Opelz was the Head of the IAEA Office in Geneva from 1967 to 2000. She tells the history of the IAEA as seen from Geneva. She describes how the NPT negotiations affected the Agency and how the Geneva office grew and changed over time. Opelz sheds light on the IAEA’s relationships with other organizations in the UN family.
Interview: Vienna, 28 July 2015 [more]