An international gathering of nuclear power plant regulators in Vienna this week, known as the Convention on Nuclear Safety, did not pass two Swiss proposals that would have added basic language to the convention's pact, which attempts to create a uniform regulatory approach to nuclear power around the world.
The seventy-seven signatories to the convention, represented by diplomats and regulators, met to discuss two Swiss proposals. One would have added language that mandated older nuclear power plants – those in operation before the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan – be upgraded to meet modern safety specifications. But the convention failed to add this language to the pact in a proposal that would have been binding to all signatories.
The convention also failed to pass a proposal that would have bound signatories to build nuclear power plants with the aim of making them safe and incorporating mitigating features in the event of an accident.
Those changes sound obvious, but spread across the globe, even basic language, if it is binding, makes for seismic changes in the industry.
Conference President Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina said the industry had already responded to the three-reactor meltdown accident in Japan. “Operators themselves and national regulators reacted without delay introducing changes and checking areas of vulnerability,” he said.
“Second, at the regional level … regulators and regional associations ensured that these initiatives would not be isolated from what was being done in nearby countries,” he added, as quoted by Eurasia Review News and Analysis.
With Russia and the United States opposed to the amendments, they were not expected to pass. Grossi recommended the convention issue a declaration, which stated that “comprehensive and systematic safety assessments are to be carried out periodically and regularly for existing installations throughout their lifetime in order to identify safety improvements … Reasonably practicable or achievable safety improvements are to be implemented in a timely manner.”
Although not binding or requiring ratification, the declaration noted that future activity by the convention would reflect what the declaration intended.