IAEA to meet on nuclear safety rules

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will start a meeting today aiming at improving nuclear safety as a result of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima plant. The UN's nuclear watchdog is scheduled to hold five days of talks involving officials from 150 countries on how to make nuclear power safer. The meeting will also discuss a report into the Fukushima nuclear emergency. But there are differences as to how much international action is needed to prevent future accidents. According to the (BBC) some states argue the details of safety regulation should be left to the governments concerned. Others want the IAEA's guidelines to be made mandatory under international law. The Fukushima disaster has prompted widespread public concern about nuclear safety. Germany has decided to shut down all its reactors by 2022 and Italy has voted against plans to revive nuclear power. The IAEA report on the Fukushima accident is to be published on Monday at the conference. Leaks from the report indicate it has found that Japan did not follow all the proper guidelines for how to respond to the crisis. It failed to follow what the IAEA calls tiered safety measures, and did not learn from past threats to nuclear plants in areas prone to tsunami risk, according to leaks. But it will also praise the dangerous and hard work carried out by Japan's nuclear workers. Some 110,000 tonnes of water have built up during efforts to cool reactors which were hit by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. The contaminated water, enough to fill 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools, has been at risk of spilling into the sea. Fukushima's is the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The powerful earthquake and the tsunami it generated are now known to have killed more than 15,280 people, while nearly 8,500 remain unaccounted for. EM