On 17 February 2012, the Japanese Government announced that it will hold The Fukushima Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety, in co-sponsorship with the IAEA.
Convening in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, from 15 to 17 December 2012, the Conference will be organized in two sessions. Opening with a Ministerial Session on 15 December 2012, to be followed by technical experts' sessions.
The International Ministerial Conference's principal objective is to contribute to strengthening nuclear safety worldwide. The Conference will provide yet another opportunity to share with the international community further knowledge and lessons learned from the accident at TEPCO's Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations, to further enhance transparency, and to discuss the progress of international efforts in strengthening nuclear safety, including through the implementation of the IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety.
Action Plan
After the nuclear accident at TEPCO's Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations on 11 March 2011, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano dispatched an International Experts Fact-Finding Mission to the site of the accident, and convened a Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety in Vienna in June 2011. The Ministerial Conference adopted a Ministerial Declaration that, inter alia, requested the Director General to develop a draft Action Plan on Nuclear Safety. Developed in intensive consultation with Member States, the Action Plan on Nuclear Safety was adopted by the IAEA's Board of Governors and subsequently unanimously endorsed by the IAEA General Conference in September 2011. The implementation of the Action Plan started immediately after its adoption through a wide range of activities.
Key Work Areas
The full implementation of the Nuclear Safety Action Plan makes a major contribution towards enhancing nuclear power production safety. The activities undertaken to implement the Action Plan focus on reviewing, improving and strengthening IAEA peer reviews; emergency preparedness and response; the effectiveness of national regulatory bodies and operating organizations; IAEA Safety Standards and their implementation; the international legal framework's effectiveness, capacity building; the effectiveness of communication, information dissemination and transparency; and nuclear safety research and development.
Transparency
When the Nuclear Safety Action Plan was adopted, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano stated that it contains concrete and achievable actions to make nuclear safety post-Fukushima more robust and effective than before. "At its core is greater transparency," the Director General emphasized, "if there is more transparency, there is more incentive to implement all the actions in the Plan."