JRC DDG Vladimir Sucha attended the JP/IAEA Ministerial conference in Fukushima

EU News 89/2013

22 February 2013

On 16-17 December 2012, JRC DDG, Mr. Vladimir Sucha, Vesselina Ranguelova, HoU for Nuclear Safety of JRC and Marc Noel of the JRC Institute of Energy and Transport in Petten came to Japan to attended together with the EU Delegation in Tokyo the Fukushima Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety (Koriyama/ Fukushima prefecture, 16-17 December 2012), organised by IAEA and the Government of Japan.

The EU and her MS were well represented at ministerial level ( FR, BG, HU, Ireland, SE), ambassador level (AT, BE, BG, CZ, FR, HU, LT, LUX, NL, PL, RO, SK) and at top level regulators (France, Finland, Germany, UK, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Greece, as well as from Switzerland);

During the conference participants shared lessons learnt from the Fukushima accident and discussed the implementation of the IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety.

V. Sucha (JRC) gave a presentation in a panel on "Protecting people from ionising radiation" on behalf of the European Commission. This is the area on which the main concerns of Japanese citizens are focused now. The EU instruments and actions taken after Fukushima to strengthen citizen protection again ionizing radiation harmful impact was underlined.

Results from the EU stress tests were presented by the Chair of the EU Stress Tests Peer Review Board Mr. Ph. Jamet. The Ministerial conference referred to the EU Stress Test as one of the central mechanisms after the accident.

During the conference the newly established Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA), presented their three international advisers: A-C Lacoste/FR (former ASN Chairman), M.Weightman/UK (Head of ONR) and Richard Meserve/US (former NRC Chairman). It was reminded that there must be a clear division between the role of the government in the promotion of nuclear energy and the responsibility of providing for its safety. Also, it was repeatedly mentioned, that nuclear safety should be treated as a dynamic process which needs constant improvement rather than a state to be attained.

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On 17 December, in Tokyo, at a workshop of JST, under the chair of Prof Arimoto of GRIPS, DDG Sucha presented the JRC as "The EU model on how to use Science and Research to better support policy decisions". In a small circle the presentation led to an intense debate with representatives of the JP Cabinet Office, of CRDS, RISTEX and NISTEP, centring around the topic of how to re-establish trust in science after the Fukushima accident. Further exchanges on the topic were envisaged.

Related document: EC JRC scientific support to Euratom Treaty implementation (PDF)

Tom Kuczynski, EU, 2012	Barbara Rhode, EU, 2012

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