As the center of international nuclear collaboration, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) organizes and hosts numerous topical and technical events every year, inviting experts from around the world to participate and contribute. The purpose of these events ranges from working out a set of recommendations and advice, to providing analyses of aspects of individual projects or specific programmatic areas, to receiving training or sharing knowledge.

IAEA Programs at Argonne National Laboratory is responsible for processing almost all US experts invited to attend non-safeguards IAEA events, including technical and consultancy meetings, workshops, training courses, expert missions, standing committee meetings and international conferences or symposia. Our scope includes US Federal Government affiliates of any nationality as well as all private US citizens, permanent residents, expatriates, and dual-citizenship holders. It is federal protocol to prepare and approve an electronic Country Clearance cable (eCC) for each federal employee, contractor or representative traveling internationally to attend an IAEA event. We direct all in-person federal participants to their individual federal travel office, where available. Annually, our Office processes upwards of 20,000 emails supporting ~2000 participating experts in over 900 IAEA events.

Interested US experts may wish to subscribe to the alerts distributed by IAEA Programs at Argonne.

Federal experts who have received an designation request or other invitation from the IAEA will be contacted by IAEA Programs with details on the clearance process. On request, our office may also retransmit participation forms on behalf of or complete InTouch+ applications for US nationals and federal affiliates. Travel clearance is generally not required for private experts. Private experts are notified by email when their nomination review process is complete and federal experts are directed to any further requirements. We also provide ad hoc cradle-to-grave support to nominees, the IAEA and federal stakeholders.

A summary of the Nominations process:

• IAEA emails a designation request, note verbale or similar notice to the UNVIE Nominations Contact Point, which forwards to Argonne. The United States requests as much lead time as possible, preferring at least three months; note that any invitation recieved within 30 days of an event's start is subject to extraordinary handling.
• Argonne requests initial federal approval to proceed
• Argonne sends out a fortnightly interagency vetting digest containing all upcoming events
• After clearing the interagency vetting period (≈2–3 weeks) without objection:
  • Argonne marks private nominations Completed and notifies them by email
  • Argonne marks federal nominations Completed, having previously notified them
  • At this stage, the IAEA is invited to work directly with all nominees to plan logistics surrounding their participtation

A summary of the US-hosted event clearance process:

• IAEA sends a Host Government Arrangement (HGA) letter via email to the UNVIE Nominations Contact Point, which forwards to Argonne. The United States requests as much lead time as possible, strongly preferring at least four months.
• Argonne requests initial federal approval to proceed
• Argonne circulates received correspondence for broad interagency review. In the absence of any objections:
  • Argonne drafts a cable and circulates it to designated interagency contacts for initial, then final clearance
  • Argonne transmits the cleared cable and requests a signed agreement letter from UNVIE
  • Upon receipt of the signed agreement letter, the US host and IAEA may proceed to finalize arrangements for the upcoming US event

For questions on the federal Nominations process, please contact us at [email protected]. Apply to IAEA events like conferences, training courses and technical meetings via InTouch.