As nuclear power spreads, so do worries about safety

any more. The devil is coal.” Philippe Jamet, director of nuclear installation safety at the IAEA, describes the industry’s record as “second to none.” Still, he says that countries new to or still learning about nuclear power “have to move down the learning curve, and they will learn from (their) mistakes.” The Vienna-based IAEA, a U.N. body, was set up in 1957 in large part to limit such trial and error, providing quality controls and expertise to countries with nuclear programs and overseeing pacts binding them to high safety standards. The agency, however, is already stretched with monitoring Iran and North Korea over their suspected nuclear arms programs, and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says his organization cannot be the main guarantor of safety. The primary responsibility, he says, rests with the operators of a nuclear facility and their government.

Developing nations insist they are ready for the challenge, but worries persist that bad habits of the past could reflect on nuclear operational safety. In China, for instance, thousands die annually in the world’s most dangerous coal mines and thousands more in fires, explosions, and other accidents often blamed on insufficient safety equipment and workers ignoring safety rules. Chinese state media last Saturday reported that nearly 3,800 people died in mine accidents last year. This is about 20 percent less than in 2006, but it still leaves China’s mines the world’s deadliest. A Finnish study published in 2005 said India’s annual industrial fatality rate is 11.4 people per 100,000 workers and the accident rate 8,700 per 100,000 workers. Overall, Asian nations excluding China and India have an average industrial accident fatality rate of 21.5 per 100,000 and an accident rate of over 16,000 per 100,000 workers, says the report, by the Tampere University of Technology in Finland. The study lists a fatality rate of 5.2 people per 100,000 for the United states and 3 per 100,000 for France. Countries with nuclear power are obligated to report all incidents to the IAEA. The study said, though, that most Asian governments vastly underreport industrial accidents to the U.N. International Labor Organization — experts estimate that China reports fewer than 1 percent of the industrial accidents occurring every year in China.

Separately, China and India shared 70th place in the 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index, published by the Transparency International think tank that ranked 163 nations, with the least corrupt first and the most last. Vietnam occupied the 111th spot, and Indonesia — which, like Hanoi, wants to build a nuclear reactor — came in 130th. “Are there special concerns about the developing world? The answer is definitely yes,” said Carl Thayer, a Southeast Asia expert with the Australian Defense Force Academy. Corrupt officials in licensing and supervisory agencies in the region could undermine the best of IAEA guidelines and oversight, Thayer said. “There could be a dropping of standards, and that affects all aspects of the nuclear industry, from buying the material, to processing applications to building and running the plant.”

A Vienna-based diplomat whose portfolio includes nuclear issues told Jahn that in the 1990s the Canadian government offered India troubleshooting information for its reactors, but the Indians “did not want to know about it.” The diplomat, who demanded anonymity in exchange for discussing confidential information, said: “It reflected the attitude that national pride is more important than safety.”

Permanent storage of radioactive waste, which can remain toxic for tens of thousands of years, is another major problem, as is shutting nuclear plants that are no longer safe. In China, permanent dump sites are not expected to be operational before 2040, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Energy. For now, China — as is the case with India — stores the waste in temporary sites, usually close to reactors, where it is more vulnerable to theft and poses a greater environmental danger. Nuclear proponents say new generations of reactors now on the drawing board come with better fail-safe mechanisms and fewer moving parts, but even some of these supporters are skeptical about creating the foolproof reactor. Hans-Holger Rogner, head of the IAEA’s planning and economic studies section, says he is “suspicious when people say the next (reactor) generation will be safer than the one we have.”