Efforts to raise nuclear safety 'clearly insufficient': IAEA's Amano

Boston (Platts)--4Apr2011/415 pm EDT/2015 GMT

Past efforts by nuclear power plant operators, regulators and International Atomic Energy Agency member states to improve nuclear safety worldwide were "clearly not sufficient" to prevent the catastrophic accident that has befallen Japan's Fukushima I nuclear plant, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in Vienna Monday.

Amano, speaking at a briefing after the opening session of the Fifth Review Meeting of the Convention on Nuclear Safety, said it was "premature" to say that the convention needs to be amended to give it more teeth.

Asked whether the IAEA itself should take up international oversight responsibilities in nuclear safety, as it has in nuclear safeguards, Amano said: "I don't know whether the agency should be a safety watchdog or not," adding that the IAEA can do "only what our member states wish us to do."
But he said he personally "wish[ed] that our [IAEA] safety standards would be stronger and that we had more capability to help member states to ensure safety."

IAEA nuclear safety standards are used by most countries as a basis for national regulations.

An IAEA official told Platts several of the standards, including those on designing plants to protect them against earthquakes and tsunamis and those related to the availability of backup power and cooling, will need to be reviewed and modified in light of the Fukushima I accident.

The safety convention, which entered into force in 1994, works by triennial peer review and by incentive, with no sanctions for parties who might be found not to have met their obligations under the treaty.

It was created in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl accident to encourage more information exchange and greater attention to nuclear safety in all countries. The convention has 72 parties now, including all countries with operating nuclear power plants.

Amano has invited political leaders and technical experts to gather in Vienna June 20-24 for an interministerial conference to "give thought" to what has happened at Fukushima I "and make nuclear power plants safer."

But he said Monday that because there is not yet any "clear understanding" about just what happened at the Japanese plant, it is also "not yet time to have a clear answer" on what lessons can be learned from the accident and how such an event can be precluded in the future.

The June meeting will also probe how communication can be improved in the event of another severe accident, Amano said.

The IAEA has been criticized by governments and parts of the media for not having had enough information immediately about what was happening at Fukushima.

Amano said the IAEA was operating within the constraints of two conventions -- also created after Chernobyl -- that are supposed to facilitate early warning of accidents and mutual assistance. He said that in the case of Fukushima, "at the beginning there was some difficulty in the information flow from Japan."

After Amano, himself a former Japanese diplomat, went to Tokyo to meet with Prime Minister Naoto Kan and posted two people of its own in Japan, there was "a better flow of information," he said.

--Ann MacLachlan, ann_maclachlan@platts.com

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