Friday, Sept. 9, 2011 - Global Security Newswire

A faction of International Atomic Energy Agency member nations appears set to succeed in striking legal mandates from atomic accident prevention reforms proposed by the agency’s chief amid the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported on Friday (see GSN, Aug. 26).

The facility was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left Japan with more than 20,000 people missing or dead. Radiation releases on a level not seen since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster forced the evacuation of about 80,000 residents from a 12-mile ring exclusion zone surrounding the site.

The United States, Argentina, China, India and Pakistan have watered down a package of safety proposals put forward in June by IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, according to multiple envoys. The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief called for regular accident prevention inspections of atomic reactors, crisis plans and oversight entities in member states.

Time lines in the plan for examining the agency’s accident prevention guidelines within 12 months and for vetting all atomic reactors within 18 months are no longer being proposed. The plan calls for related reviews at 30 nuclear facilities, down from 44, in no more than three years.

"You can argue it has been watered down," an envoy said of the proposal’s lack of legal mandates. "But member states are still making a political commitment to do more."

Countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, Thailand and Singapore disagree with alterations to the plan, which is set to be voted on at an IAEA meeting scheduled to begin on Monday.

"We wanted the lessons from Fukushima to be included in the action plan. But in the current version they are not adequately reflected yet," said one representative of a Western European nation (Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Monsters and Critics, Sept. 9).

The Japanese government indicated it would provide additional details on the atomic crisis in September in an assessment for the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Friday (Asahi Shimbun I, Sept. 9).

Meanwhile, Hirosaki University researchers said individuals within 18 miles of the Fukushima plant received as much as 50 millisieverts of radiation in the initial two months following the March 11 events (Akiko Okazaki, Asahi Shimbun II, Sept. 9).