NEXT STEPS: PUBLICATION OF THE SINGLE SAFETY

FUNDAMENTALS AND ESTABLISHMENT OF A HARMONIZED SET OF SAFETY REQUIREMENTS AND GUIDES

The next steps are the submission of the draft Safety Fundamentals publication to the IAEA Board of Governors for approval as an IAEA

publication and its submission to the governing bodies of the several other co-sponsoring international organizations for approval. When the new Safety Fundamentals have been approved there will finally be a basis for a consistent set of safety publications to be used by Member States. This single publication and the subsequent set of Safety Requirements and Guides will:

(a) Implement the concept of ‘safety as a whole’, as defined by the Convention on Nuclear Safety;

(b) Provide a common language for a common understanding of radiation and nuclear safety;

(c) Help the implementation of the Strategy for the IAEA Safety Standards towards a global reference point for nuclear safety, radioactive waste management, radiation protection and for the transport of radioactive material.

There are, however, still a number of different views on this latter objective: should the IAEA Safety Standards be used as a ‘reference’? Should they be used as a ‘tool’? Should they be used as a ‘useful tool’? Should they be considered as a ‘source of guidance’? There was a considerable amount of discussion at the end of the second review meeting of the Joint Convention on this and on the use of the IAEA Safety Standards by Member States in general and on their use in the context of the review meetings of the international conventions in particular. Some examples were given of the direct use of the IAEA Safety Standards as national regulations. Several other examples were given of their use as a reference for drafting national regulations. This latter case is quite similar to the approach currently being followed by WENRA (Western European Nuclear Regulatory Association), which uses the IAEA Safety Standards for harmonization purposes.

DISCUSSION

A. GONZÁLEZ (Argentina — Chairperson): We have a convention and we will have a set of international standards, which may help us to harmonize safety in this complicated area. Let me underline what Mr. Lacoste said — that this approval of a single set of Safety Fundamentals will really be a revolu-tionary action in the history of the international IAEA Safety Standards. The present separation into three sets of Safety Fundamentals is not helpful; it creates unevenness and even some contradiction. It took a lot of effort, particularly on the part of Mr. Lacoste, to bring about this change.

HARMONIZED SAFETY STANDARDS

T. TANIGUCHI (IAEA): Yesterday there was a lot of interesting discussion about recent initiatives — national (those of the USA and the Russian Federation) and international. However, not much was said about international legal instruments and safety standards. The policy discussions about establishing, for instance, multinational approaches tend to focus more on the promotional issues, for obvious reasons, but I have been wondering whether Mr. Lacoste has any suggestions on how to link the safety area, partic-ularly the international legal instruments and safety standards, with these current discussions and initiatives.

A.-C. LACOSTE (France): This is a difficult issue — what is the official or legal status of the IAEA Safety Standards? Sometimes different representa-tives of the same country do not take the same position; that has been so in the case of the USA. Depending on the topics being discussed, depending on the convention, depending on the way the delegation is led, the position of the country is not the same.

The issue is clear: do we wish to give a formal regulatory status to the IAEA’s Safety Standards? The answer is not obvious because, should we decide to give that kind of status to them, the work on establishing them would not be the same and I do not know what quality of standards would be attained.

My personal feeling is that this is such a difficult topic that we have no other way forward than first to continue our efforts to produce safety standards of as high a quality as possible. In that connection we should bear in mind that historically many of the IAEA Safety Standards represented, at one time, the lowest common denominator. Then they became collections of good practices and now they are collections of good practices and sometimes of best practices.

So we should continue our efforts to improve the quality of standards. Second, we should continue expanding the scope of the standards. For spent fuel there is still a need for additional standards. Third, we should start trying to persuade people and countries that the use of safety standards is a good thing for them.

But this is obviously a long term process.

What I cannot imagine is any kind of global decision that we now have a new safety regime involving the mandatory use of standards. So, I think what is required is long term persuasion with ongoing efforts to improve quality.

A. GONZÁLEZ (Argentina — Chairperson): I believe that the point of Mr. Taniguchi was somewhat independent of this legal status issue, which — as you indicate — is controversial and difficult. The point was that in the area of spent fuel management the common theme has been that of international partnerships, which does not arise in other areas. In this area, the expression

‘international partnerships’ is used repeatedly but it is difficult to understand how you can have an international partnership covering everything except safety. It seems to me that the idea of international partnerships should be

linked with the idea of international harmonization of the IAEA Safety Standards to be applied in that partnership. That, I believe, is Mr. Taniguchi’s point, and it is somewhat independent of the legal issue.

A.-C. LACOSTE (France): Regarding the establishment of a single set of Safety Fundamentals, I believe that it is a way of bringing nuclear safety and radiation protection closer together. For me, this is the beginning of a real merger of radiation protection and nuclear safety. I am the chairman of the International Nuclear Regulators Association, which consists of the heads of the nuclear safety authorities of eight countries (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA). Up to now we have been dealing only with nuclear safety issues. At our last meeting (held in Paris in March), for the first time we started discussing radiation protection issues, and our feeling was that there should be no separation between the two areas. At our next meeting (to be held in Avignon in September), L. Holm, Chairman of the Inter-national Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), will give a presen-tation about the ICRP’s work. I think this is really the beginning of a new era, without a separation between the four domains — radioactive waste safety, radiation safety, nuclear safety and transport safety.

J. BOUCHARD (France): Regarding the initiatives we discussed yesterday, we are trying to devise multilateral processes for the nuclear fuel cycle, new types of reactor and so on, and we shall have to adapt the IAEA Safety Standards to them. I have been involved in discussions of this within the framework of the Generation IV International Forum. Within that framework we have tried, with only limited success, to discuss with safety authorities how to develop standards that take account of the future new technologies. The aspect of applicable safety standards was not completely clear in the presenta-tions on the new initiatives.

A. GONZÁLEZ (Argentina — Chairperson): Mr. Lacoste made a very important point — the new Safety Fundamentals are really fundamental. They are different from what we had before — what we used to call ‘Fundamentals’

were not really fundamental; for example, some of them applied to a particular type of reactor. So this may be the beginning of a new era, as Mr. Lacoste said, and the Safety Fundamentals can serve as a basic framework for these recent initiatives, and for international partnerships.