FP (Foreign Policy): Atomic Dogs

[kristopher]

Atomic Dogs
Why can't the world's nuclear energy watchdog do anything about Fukushima or Iran's weapons program? I went to find out.
BY KONSTANTIN KAKAES | SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

The Incident and Emergency Center of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is on the eighth floor of the organization's headquarters building in Vienna. It is a low-ceilinged room, with a small conference table and a handful of cubicles, that somehow manages to be claustrophobic despite its expansive views toward the center of the city -- one set of windows looks down on the IAEA's plaza, where over 100 national flags line a fountain; the other looks across the Danube. It was a gray and stately vista of European order the day I visited.

For almost two months following Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which triggered a still-unfolding crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the room was staffed around the clock by 230 IAEA staff members working in shifts. I asked Elena Buglova, the Incident and Emergency Center's (IEC's) director, what they had accomplished during their 24/7 alert. "We did accomplish the activities of the IEC in line with the plans and procedures agreed in advance, which were known to member states, which were known to the competent authorities," she said. These are some of the plans and procedures Buglova followed, which she showed me on a slide: Fundamental Safety Principles; Governmental, Legal and Regulatory Framework for Safety; Preparedness and Response for a Nuclear or Radiological Emergency; Arrangements for Preparedness for a Nuclear or Radiological Emergency; and, lastly, the Criteria for Use in Preparedness and Response for a Nuclear or Radiological Emergency.

But for all this preparedness, even as the Fukushima Daiichi plant leaked a radioactive cloud into the atmosphere, all Yukiya Amano, the IAEA's head, could do was relay reassuring messages from the Japanese government, bound as he was by IAEA regulations limiting his authority. Even Buglova couldn't tell me what any of this had actually accomplished.

...In a week in Vienna I heard exactly one person -- George Felgate, head of the World Association of Nuclear Operators -- express some sense of responsibility for the disaster. "Did we fail? Yes, we did," Felgate said, referring to the Fukushima plant's lack of preparation for a massive tsunami and the resulting loss of electrical power. By contrast, Amano's opening statement went directly to the public reaction: " caused deep public anxiety throughout the world and damaged confidence in nuclear power," he said. Amano's attitude was not one of contrition, but rather was directed at how to assuage public fears, the implication being that such fears stem from ignorance and could not possibly be well-founded...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/28/atomic_dogs?page=full