During a briefing on Japan’s reactor crisis Monday,
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano called for a
high-level conference on nuclear safety.
Before summer, Amano said, international leaders should meet
to assess the accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, launch a
process to improve safety and find ways to strengthen the response to nuclear
emergencies.
Several countries have called for tighter nuclear safety
standards recently, including Russia. President Dmitry Medvedev said
international standards may be needed for reactor construction and safeguards
against earthquakes and tsunamis like the one that blacked out the Japanese
plant. One such rule might be a prohibition on building nuclear plants in areas
where magnitude 8 and higher earthquakes are known to occur, a regulation already
in place in Russia.
The comments, posted on the president’s website, follow a
meeting last week of Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom that called for
safety inspections of Russian 32 plants.
Also, European Commission leaders agreed on Friday to an
earlier proposal to implement “stress tests” at all European reactors. France,
Germany and Spain proposed closing any of the reactors that fail the tests, the
parameters of which have not yet been announced.