Nuclear forum backs safety push after Japan crisis

A 72-nation nuclear forum backed a United Nations campaign to strengthen atomic safety on Thursday and pledged to carry out prompt steps to address public distrust in the technology following Japan's crisis. Japan's month-long struggle to stabilise the Fukushima nuclear power plant after it was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami has prompted a rethink about atomic power world-wide with some countries putting plans worth billions of euros on hold.
"(We) are committed to draw and act upon the lessons of the Fukushima accident," nuclear regulators said in a joint statement at the end of a two-week conference in Vienna. Outside the venue, the environmental group Greenpeace had erected a small model nuclear power station which spewed out smoke. About 20 demonstrators dressed in yellow overalls held up anti-nuclear energy placards and handed out leaflets.
"Nuclear safety is the very lifeline of nuclear power development," the meeting's president, Li Ganjie of China, said. "Nuclear safety at the same time knows no boundaries, it is a global issue. Indeed, members of the public have anxiety around nuclear power and nuclear issues," he added.
Although it was scheduled before the March 11 earthquake, the Vienna meeting to review the 1996 Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) has been dominated by Japan's emergency. It was the first international meeting to discuss nuclear safety since the crisis. The forum said it supported plans to hold a ministerial conference on nuclear safety in June focusing on Fukushima. The meeting will be hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN atomic agency.
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano wants the meeting to help strengthen nuclear safety and draw lessons from Fukushima, the most serious atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. The CNS forum said it would also hold a special meeting on Japan in August 2012 and set out more concrete steps to improve safety. Li said the most hotly-debated topic among delegates in the past two weeks had been nuclear power plant design.
"We believe it is necessary to further enhance the capability to resist external events in terms of design and construction of the nuclear power plants and also to enhance safety standards," he told a news conference. Communication was another topic of concern. Japan has come under pressure, even from the Japanese head of the IAEA, to provide more information about its stricken plant. Tokyo has said it had struggled to gather data and promised to do more.
"Transparency is one of the highest priorities of Japan in addressing the Fukushima Daiichi accident," Tokyo's representative Ichiro Ogasawara said. The developments in Japan have also put the IAEA's ability to handle crises in the spotlight. The agency lacks the power to enforce safety standards it recommends, which some argue needs to change to help guard against future disasters.