10 May (NucNet): The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) did not play its part as a communications tool during the Fukushima-Daiichi accident in March 2011 and is being revised, a conference heard today.
Denis Flory, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s deputy director-general and head of department of nuclear safety and security, told a conference in Madrid on crisis communications that the IAEA’s secretariat with support of the INES advisory committee and the NEA is developing additional guidance “on the use of INES in severe accidents”.
He said the hardest part for the agency was giving an independent view of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident. He said information needed to be “timely, clear, factually correct, objective and easily understandable”.
Mr Flory said before the IAEA’s Nuclear Safety Action Plan, which was endorsed by the agency’s 151 member states in September 2011, the job of the IAEA was just to relay information about nuclear incidents. The action plan now gives the agency a mandate to analyse information, to offer a prognosis and identify potential consequences.
The action plan calls for IAEA member states to improve the transparency and effectiveness of communication among operators, regulators and international organisations, and strengthen the IAEA’s coordinating role.
In response to a question about why the public should believe regulators more than other sources when it comes to the health consequences of accidents such as Fukushima-Daiichi, Mr Flory said the effect of radioactivity on the body is not an exact science.
He said: “I agree there is a gap here. What is needed is more science and more research. When you have a discrepancy between science and information from regulators then you have a problem. We need to do more science.”
The IAEA Nuclear Safety Action Plan is online:
www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC55/Documents/gc55-14.pdf
