IAEA experts point to tsunami risks, regulatory body independence
Jun. 2, 2011
By Miya Tanaka
Nuclear safety experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed to an underestimated tsunami hazard and the importance of ensuring the independence of nuclear regulatory authorities in their preliminary assessment of the Fukushima nuclear crisis submitted Wednesday to Japan.
The summary was issued following a week-long mission in Japan by a team of nearly 20 experts from countries around the world, who plan to deliver a final report on their findings at an IAEA ministerial meeting on nuclear safety to be held in Vienna from June 20 to 24.
After receiving the summary, Goshi Hosono, a special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan on the crisis, said he hopes to use the report in Japan's own investigation into the cause of the crisis and other verification activities.
Tokyo should send a minister to the upcoming IAEA meeting to fulfill its responsibility to explain the situation to other countries, he also said.
The summary said that the tsunami hazard ''was underestimated'' and that nuclear designers and operators should appropriately evaluate and provide protection against the risks of all natural hazards, while calling for the need to periodically update those assessments in light of new information and experience.
It also raised questions about Japan's nuclear regulatory system, which is often criticized as the nuclear safety agency is under the wing of the industry ministry that promotes nuclear power, with the international experts stressing the importance of ''regulatory independence.''
Mike Weightman, chief of the IAEA team who is Britain's Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, told reporters that while it is ''up to the Japanese government to have a look at those areas,'' the independence of nuclear regulatory bodies is one of the IAEA's fundamental principles.
''It needs to make sure that not only are they independent in structure, but also independent in the resources, the expertise that they have available to them. And I am sure we all can learn how to make that more effective,'' he said.
He said the issue will be one of the topics at the IAEA conference in June.
The summary also called for necessary mitigation systems over the danger posed by hydrogen and the need for major nuclear facilities with severe accident potential to have on-site emergency response centers with adequate provisions for communications and resources.
At the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, hydrogen explosions blew off the buildings housing the Nos. 1 and 3 reactors in the early days of the nuclear crisis which erupted in the wake of the March 11 quake and tsunami disaster in northeastern Japan.
The response of the Japanese government to protect the public, including evacuation, and of the workers at the site to deal with the situation was praised as ''impressive'' and ''exemplary,'' respectively, in the report, and the experts recommended a timely follow-up program on public and workers' radiation exposures.
They also acknowledged that Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s road map on how it plans to restore the plant's crippled reactors is important, but said it will need modification when new circumstances emerge and may be assisted by international cooperation.
Weightman said that people perhaps cannot predict the precise moment when natural disasters might occur, but people can ''predict the consequence'' and that should be taken into account in designing facilities.
''So you can make nuclear plants safe against natural events. But you have to understand those events very carefully and be able to predict them, not the timing, but the size of them,'' he said.
Hit by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 14-meter-high tsunami on March 11, the six-reactor nuclear complex lost nearly all of its power sources, leading the cooling functions of many of the reactors and pools storing spent nuclear fuel to fail.
Effort to stabilize the nation's worst nuclear plant crisis continued Wednesday, but the plant operator said that it will delay the planned test run of a system to reduce radioactive substances in seawater near the plant on the Pacific coast due to a defect at its power panel.
The seawater enclosed inside breakwaters off the plant has been seriously contaminated because highly radioactive water temporarily leaked out from the plant.
(Distributed by Kyodo News on June 1, 2011)
Nuclear safety experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed to an underestimated tsunami hazard and the importance of ensuring the independence of nuclear regulatory authorities in their preliminary assessment of the Fukushima nuclear crisis submitted Wednesday to Japan.
The summary was issued following a week-long mission in Japan by a team of nearly 20 experts from countries around the world, who plan to deliver a final report on their findings at an IAEA ministerial meeting on nuclear safety to be held in Vienna from June 20 to 24.
After receiving the summary, Goshi Hosono, a special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan on the crisis, said he hopes to use the report in Japan's own investigation into the cause of the crisis and other verification activities.
Tokyo should send a minister to the upcoming IAEA meeting to fulfill its responsibility to explain the situation to other countries, he also said.
The summary said that the tsunami hazard ''was underestimated'' and that nuclear designers and operators should appropriately evaluate and provide protection against the risks of all natural hazards, while calling for the need to periodically update those assessments in light of new information and experience.
It also raised questions about Japan's nuclear regulatory system, which is often criticized as the nuclear safety agency is under the wing of the industry ministry that promotes nuclear power, with the international experts stressing the importance of ''regulatory independence.''
Mike Weightman, chief of the IAEA team who is Britain's Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, told reporters that while it is ''up to the Japanese government to have a look at those areas,'' the independence of nuclear regulatory bodies is one of the IAEA's fundamental principles.
''It needs to make sure that not only are they independent in structure, but also independent in the resources, the expertise that they have available to them. And I am sure we all can learn how to make that more effective,'' he said.
He said the issue will be one of the topics at the IAEA conference in June.
The summary also called for necessary mitigation systems over the danger posed by hydrogen and the need for major nuclear facilities with severe accident potential to have on-site emergency response centers with adequate provisions for communications and resources.
At the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, hydrogen explosions blew off the buildings housing the Nos. 1 and 3 reactors in the early days of the nuclear crisis which erupted in the wake of the March 11 quake and tsunami disaster in northeastern Japan.
The response of the Japanese government to protect the public, including evacuation, and of the workers at the site to deal with the situation was praised as ''impressive'' and ''exemplary,'' respectively, in the report, and the experts recommended a timely follow-up program on public and workers' radiation exposures.
They also acknowledged that Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s road map on how it plans to restore the plant's crippled reactors is important, but said it will need modification when new circumstances emerge and may be assisted by international cooperation.
Weightman said that people perhaps cannot predict the precise moment when natural disasters might occur, but people can ''predict the consequence'' and that should be taken into account in designing facilities.
''So you can make nuclear plants safe against natural events. But you have to understand those events very carefully and be able to predict them, not the timing, but the size of them,'' he said.
Hit by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 14-meter-high tsunami on March 11, the six-reactor nuclear complex lost nearly all of its power sources, leading the cooling functions of many of the reactors and pools storing spent nuclear fuel to fail.
Effort to stabilize the nation's worst nuclear plant crisis continued Wednesday, but the plant operator said that it will delay the planned test run of a system to reduce radioactive substances in seawater near the plant on the Pacific coast due to a defect at its power panel.
The seawater enclosed inside breakwaters off the plant has been seriously contaminated because highly radioactive water temporarily leaked out from the plant.
(Distributed by Kyodo News on June 1, 2011)
