IAEA nuclear safety plan derailed by nuclear countries

. When the IAEA finally took up a draft resolution on Tuesday, it contained no timelines, deadlines or mandatory inspections.

Though Nuclear Crisis Continues, IAEA Can’t Force Safety Overhaul, Truth Out, 18 September 2011 by: Gregg Levine, On Monday, September 12, an incinerator explosion at a French nuclear waste processing center killed one, injured four, and created just enough nuclear news to edge this week’s other nuclear story right out of the headlines.

The explosion, which is reported not to have caused any leak of radiation, was at a facility that reprocesses used nuclear reactor fuel in order to create a more toxic, less stable form of fuel commonly known as “mixed oxide” or MOX. MOX, which is a tasty blend of uranium and plutonium, was in at least some of the rods in some of the reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi facility when it suffered catastrophic failures after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami–and the presence of MOX fuel made the fallout from explosions at the Japanese plant more dangerous as a result. (More dangerous than already extremely dangerous might seem like a trivial addendum, but it is of note if for no other reason than the manufacture and use of MOX fuel is what nuclear power proponents think of when they call it a “renewable resource.”)

And it was the Fukushima disaster that brought diplomats, nuclear scientists, and government regulators to the negotiating table in Vienna for this week’s annual meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency. At issue, a June proposal by IAEA chief Yukia Amano that the world’s nuclear nations respond to the Japanese crisis with tougher safety regulations and mandatory inspections.

The proposal–which included a one-year deadline for new safety standards and an 18-month window for stress tests on all reactors–had the backing of large nuclear power-generating nations such as Canada, Germany, and Australia, as well as many non-nuclear nations across the globe, but that support and the ongoing disaster in Japan were not enough to overcome sustained, behind-the-scenes efforts to derail this plan. When the IAEA finally took up a draft resolution on Tuesday, it contained no timelines, deadlines or mandatory inspections. Instead, IAEA safety checks, peer reviews, and other moves to ensure nuclear safety may be taken up “upon request” of the nuclear state in question.

Which parties were behind the near-total neutering of the IAEA proposal? Who was responsible for reassuring the global nuclear power industry that virtually no lessons would be learned from the continuing crisis in Japan? It should be no surprise to find traditional foes of nuclear oversight such as Russia, China, Pakistan, and India (along with Argentina) pushing hard against the IAEA. And, given Barack Obama’s very public proclamations of support for nuclear power within days of the Japanese quake, it should probably also not surprise anyone to find the United States right there with them:….

http://www.truth-out.org/though-nuclear-crisis-continues-iaea-can%E2%80%99t-force-safety-overhaul/1316364799

September 19, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, safety

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