Assembly urges co-operation with IAEA to promote peaceful use of nuclear energy.

The General Assembly on 11 November urged all States to strive for effective and harmonious co-operation in carrying out the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); in promoting the use of nuclear energy and the application of the necessary measures to enhance further the safety of nuclear installations; in strengthening technical assistance to developing countries; and in ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of the Agency's safeguards system.

By adopting without a vote resolution 41/36, the text of which had been proposed by Canada, Czechoslovakia and Pakistan, the Assembly affirmed its confidence in the Agency's role in the application of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The Assembly also emphasized the need for the highest standards of safety in the design and operation of nuclear plants so as to minimize risks to life and health.

The Agency was commended for its "recent speedy responses and initiatives in the field of nuclear safety" and for its "timely and expeditious" efforts in the conclusion in September 1986 of two Conventions: on early notification of a nuclear accident, which entered into force on 27 October, and on emergency assistance in the event of such accidents. The Assembly welcomed the signing by a significant number of States of the two Conventions and called upon those States that had not yet done so to become parties to them as soon as possible.

Report: The Assembly reviewed the IAEA annual report for 1985 (GC(XXX)/775 and Corr. 1), which summarized trends in nuclear power generation world-wide and provided information on technical co-operation to help developing countries, the development and application of nuclear techniques, and the status of the safeguards regime.

In carrying out its safeguards obligations during 1985, the Agency "did not detect any anomaly which would indicate the diversion of a significant amount of safeguarded nuclear material - or the misuse of facilities or equipment subject to safeguards under certain agreements - for the manufacture of any nuclear weapons, or for any other military purpose, or for the manufacture of any other nuclear explosive device, or for purposes unknown" the report stated. It was "reasonable to conclude that nuclear material under Agency safeguards in 1985 remained in peaceful nuclear activities or was otherwise adequately accounted for".

Extensive safeguards activities in 1985 had resulted in more than 1,980 inspections carried out at 514 nuclear installations in 51 non-nuclear-weapon States and four nuclear-weapon States, according to the report. There was a total of 163 safeguards agreements in force with 96 States at the end of 1985. The safeguards agreement between the Agency and the Soviet Union relating to the voluntary offer by that country to place some of its peaceful nuclear installations under Agency safeguards had entered into force on 10 June 1985. China had also stated its willingness to place some of its civilian nuclear installations under Agency safeguards. When an agreement with China had been concluded, "voluntary - offer safeguards agreements" would be in force between the IAEA and the five nuclear-weapon States.

According to the report, the installed nuclear power capacity worldwide increased 13.7 per client in 1985 to a total of 250 Giga Watt (e). A total of 374 nuclear power plants accounted for 15 per cent of the world's electricity generation. Thirty-two new power plants had come "on line" in-1985, two of them in developing countries - India and the Republic of Korea. There had still been no general upturn in the orders for plants, and construction had begun on only six new ones. However, "vigorous" nuclear power programmes had continued in France, Japan and the Eastern European members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). China, Egypt, the Republic of Korea, Turkey and Yugoslavia were also engaged in setting up power plants.

The Agency had continued to help developing Member States assess the appropriate role of nuclear power within their national energy plans. In particular, the Agency's efforts to help those countries strengthen nuclear power planning had continued. The Agency had also concentrated on developing radiation protection guidelines and helping member States apply them. Activities relating to the safety of nuclear installations placed increasing emphasis on operational aspects, the report noted.

The Agency's programme had continued to cover developments at all stages of the "nuclear fuel cycle" - from raw materials exploration to radioactive waste disposal. Up-to-date assessments of world uranium and thorium resources and supply, and of related technologies had been used in providing information and advice to Member States. There was an over-supply of uranium and its price was falling, resulting in a continuing decline in exploration activity. The United States was no longer the leading uranium producer.

In 1985, the Agency's expenditure on technical co-operation activities, covered by voluntary contributions of member States, had reached $33.8 million, a figure 3.5 per cent higher than in 1984. Technical assistance had been rendered to 81 countries and regions through the provision of experts, equipment, fellowships, training courses and sub-contracts. The countries of the Asia and Pacific region had received close to 29 per cent of the Agency's disbursement for 1985, Latin America 23 per cent, Africa 21 per cent, and Europe 13 per cent.

According to the report, the IAEA regular 1985 budget amounted to $95 million, of which $87.3 million was to have come from assessed contributions, $3.4 million from income from "work for others", and $4.3 million from miscellaneous sources.

Blix statement: IAEA Director-General Hans Blix, in an introductory statement, outlined trends, activities and events not covered in the IAEA report.

The Chernobyl accident, he said, had prompted important new activities and developments in the field of nuclear safety and raised public questions as to the role of nuclear power. The accident had prompted comprehensive Soviet measures to stop radioactive releases, to give medical care and to protect and decontaminate the environment. The destroyed reactor was now encased and two undamaged units were again operating, after some technical modifications. Other countries in Europe had taken a variety of protective measures and a series of actions had been initiated at IAEA.

At a post-accident review meeting in Vienna in August, Soviet experts had presented "a comprehensive and frank report", he went on. Against the back-drop of an extensive media coverage which was not always accurate, this "remarkable international expert analysis" had been able to reach more precise conclusions concerning the real dimensions of the accident. Some 30 persons had died of radiation - not several thousand as was widely reported. Follow-up studies on the long-term health consequences of low-level radiation would be of major medical interest. The contamination caused by the accident would make a substantial area of land and forest around the plant uninhabitable for some time, perhaps for several years, but certain areas had already been decontaminated. The health effects of the radiation which had spread to other European countries appeared "not to be significant", he said. Some lessons of the Chernobyl accident had a broader bearing. A consensus report recommending actions and programmes to strengthen nuclear safety had been prepared national group of eminent nuclear safety experts. An expanded nuclear safety programme for the Agency would be considered by the Board of Governors in December, and would commence in 1987.

The September special session of the General Conference had achieved consensus on certain basic policy questions, namely that nuclear power would continue to be an important source of energy for social and economic development; that each country was responsible for securing the highest level of safety; that there was scope for further international cooperation in nuclear safety; and that the Agency had the central role in encouraging and facilitating such cooperation.

Commenting on the "fundamental" question as to whether nuclear power entailed unacceptable risks, Mr. Blix recalled that today 15 per cent of the world's electricity was nuclear-generated. Generating that amount of electricity would require the entire 1982 Saudi Arabian oil production, or the annual coal production of the United States. it had never been maintained that such a quantity of electricity could be generated without risk - whether by hydro, coal, oil, gas or nuclear power stations. Through the emission of sulphur dioxide and nitrode, oxide, the burning of coal and other fossil fuels caused damage to forests and lakes, and the carbon dioxide contributed to the risk of a rise in the temperature of the earth's atmosphere, the so-called "greenhouse effect". Their collective impact on the sustainability of life on the planet was incomparably higher than that of nuclear power, he stated.

With nuclear power, the major anxiety lay with the risk of a large accident and with the radioactive waste. With the significant exception of Chernobyl, the risks of nuclear electricity generation to health and environment had remained precisely that - risks, while the daily and normal use of coal and oil to generate electricity had had the most serious environmental consequences. "My conclusion is that nuclear power through fission is a realty we shall continue to live with", he said. It would help in the transition from the oil era to another energy era, perhaps solar or fusion.

No one would disagree with the conclusion that everything must be done to further improve nuclear safety and that this question had now acquired a much stronger international dimension. "A radioactive cloud does not respect national boundaries" hence the call for the establishment of an international nuclear safety regime.

The question of binding and uniform nuclear safety norms was complex, but it should be seriously considered whether some basic common safety principles could not be established and whether there could not be a greater measure of voluntary acceptance and implementation of the Agency's comprehensive nuclear safety standards. A number of mechanisms which were already in existence within IAEA might be developed and used more extensively to foster nuclear safety. One such mechanism was the Operational Safety Review Teams, which consisted of competent international experts who reviewed the operational safety of nuclear power plants at the request of national authorities.

The knowledge that both the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl accidents had been caused in large part by operator error had focused attention on the broader question of the man/machine interface, and on the specific questions of design features to neutralize operator errors. Safety could always be further improved and might be facilitated by an international exchange of ideas and experience.

Turning to the question of disarmament, he said that verification, an issue on which many arms control agreements had stumbled, was now recognized by all as being a sine qua non for effective agreements. IAEA's safeguards system had been repeatedly referred to in the Conference on Disarmament as a unique experience in international on-site verification, which might serve as a model for the design of verification measures in future agreements. For that reason, it was even more important that the system functioned "effectively and credibly, in reality as well as in perception", he stated.

Two texts approved on

item on effects of

atomic radiation

On 3 December, the General Assembly approved two texts without vote relating to the work of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, as recommended by its Special Political Committee.

By one (41/62 A), the Assembly commended the Scientific Committee for the valuable contribution it had been making over 31 years to "wider knowledge and understanding of the levels, effects and risks of atomic radiation" and for fulfilling its original mandate with scientific authority and independence of judgement.

It noted with satisfaction the continued and growing scientific cooperation between the Scientific Committee and the United Nations Environment Programme, endorsed plans for future Committee activities and asked the body to continue in 1987 the review of important problems in the field of radiation and to report thereon to the forty-second Assembly.

The Assembly, in a preambular paragraph, expressed concern about the potentially harmful effects of atomic radiation on present and future generations resulting from the levels of such radiation to which man is exposed.

By resolution 41/62 B, the Assembly invited China to become a member of the Scientific Committee, thus increasing its membership to 21.

The Special Political Committee had reviewed the report of the Scientific Committee (A/41/16), which gave in-depth treatment to the topics of genetic effects of radiation; dose-response relationships for radiation-induced cancer; and biological effects of pre-natal irradiation.

Israel asked to place its nuclear

facilities under IAEA safeguards

The General Assembly on 29 October called on Israel to urgently place all its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards in accordance with Security Council resolution 487 (1981). That resolution was adopted unanimously in 1981 after an "armed attack" by Israel on the Tammuz nuclear reactor in Iraq.

The Assembly adopted resolution 41112 by a recorded vote of 86 in favour to 5 against (El Salvador, Honduras, Israel, St. Christopher and Nevis, United States), with 55 abstentions.

The Assembly this year stated it considered that Israel had "not yet committed itself not to attack or threaten to attack nuclear facilities in Iraq or elsewhere", including facilities under IAEA safeguards. (That provision was approved by a separate recorded vote of 63 in favour to 41 against, with 33 abstentions.)

By the 26-Power text, the Assembly reaffirmed that Iraq was entitled to compensation for the damage it had suffered as a result of "the Israeli armed attack on 7 June 1981". The Conference on Disarmament was asked to continue negotiations with a view to an immediate conclusion of the agreement on the prohibition of military attacks on nuclear facilities.

Ali Sumaida of Iraq in debate said the dangerous precedent set by Israel when it committed its act of aggression in June 1981 against Iraq's nuclear installations, which were under IAEA supervision, "will most certainly be repeated in the current circumstances, which are characterized by the absence of any undertaking not to repeat such aggression in the future". Since that act of aggression, Israel had made more than 20 threats to repeat that attack. It insisted on being "the sole judge as to whether the nuclear facility is used for peaceful purposes".

Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the IAEA in 1985 had accepted as satisfactory Israel's oral and written assurances that it would not attack, or threaten to attack, peaceful nuclear facilities. The IAEA had decided to drop the matter completely from its agenda, and Iraq had not raised the matter in the 1986 IAEA General Conference. Israel had committed itself to refrain from any attack on any nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes, wherever they might be. Iraq, which had attacked Iran's nuclear facilities at Bushehr on three separate occasions, should produce assurances of the kind that Israel had already given.

IAEA symposium on nuclear materials

safeguards held in Vienna

Recent advances in nuclear material safeguards was the subject of an international symposium held at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna from 10 to 14 November. Some 300 experts from 30 IAEA member States and four international organizations attended. About 150 technical reports, divided into 15 broad subject categories, were presented.

Safeguards are the technical means applied by the IAEA to verify that nuclear equipment or materials are used exclusively for peaceful purposes. At present, IAEA safeguards cover more than 95 per cent of the civilian nuclear installations outside the five nuclear-weapon States - China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The symposium, the sixth in a series held at approximately four-year intervals, reviewed the present status of safeguards technology in all areas of development. Major topics reviewed were: improved non-destructive measurement techniques, newer statistical techniques to extract the maximum information from available data and safeguards approaches which can be used for spent fuel placed in long-term storage as an alternative to reprocessing and re-use.

General Assembly appeals for high safety standards in nuclear

plants, approves 1987 Conference plans

The General Assembly, in action related to the convening of the United Nations Conference for the Promotion of International Co-operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, scheduled for 23 March-10 April 1987 in Geneva, noted the report of the Preparatory Committee for the Conference on its seventh and final session (Vienna, 10-21 November), and invited all States to participate in the Conference "at an appropriately high level".

The resolution (41/212 A), approved without a vote, was one of two on the conference adopted by the Assembly on 11 December.

In resolution 41/212 B, the Assembly appealed to Governments to take into account, when discussing energy matters at the Conference, the "legitimate interests of neighbouring countries that could be affected by trans-boundary effects of the use of nuclear energy". The text, adopted by a vote of 119 to none, with 28 abstentions, also contained an appeal to all Governments to ensure that the highest standards of safety in the design and operation of nuclear plants were applied "in order to minimize risks to life and health".

Some delegations said that although they were concerned about nuclear safety, they felt the text prejudged the work of the Conference. Several noted that as the issue was already on the agenda of the Conference and under consideration by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the resolution was therefore unnecessary.

Austria, which sponsored the text, said it reflected a legitimate concern of all human beings, and that the Conference was an appropriate forum in which to deal with that world-wide preoccupation, nuclear safety.

Report

The Preparatory Committee reported (A/41/47) that the question of convening an international conference for the promotion of international co-operation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy for economic and social development was first considered in 1977.

The Assembly, it its resolution 32/50, had spelled out four principles: that the peaceful use of nuclear energy was of great importance for the economic and social development of many countries; that all States had the right to develop a programme for using nuclear technology in peaceful ways; that all States should have access to and be free to acquire such technology; and that international co-operation in the field should be under agreed and appropriate IAEA safeguards.

In 1980, the Assembly decided (resolution 35/112) to convene the Conference and established the Preparatory Committee, which held seven sessions between August 1981 and November 1986. The Conference, originally scheduled for 1983, was postponed twice before the 1987 dates were decided on.

The Preparatory Committee by November 1986 had developed four working papers to be considered at the Conference, setting out ways to promote international co-operation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, a proposed outline of the final document of the Conference, and procedures and topics for the work of its two Main Committees.

The Preparatory Committee noted that a Working Group established to draft the concluding document of the Conference had held inter-sessional consultations under the Chairmanship of Francisco Cuevas-Cancino (Mexico). During the Preparatory Committee's final session, a small group of "Friends of the Chairman" held informal consultations on specific issues that had not yet been resolved.

The Chairman of the Preparatory Committee, Novak Pribicevic (Yugoslavia), said that in light of recent events, there was now a greater understanding of Conference objectives and more active interest on all sides in ensuring meaningful results from it.

"The accident at Chernobyl has forcefully drawn world attention to the urgent need for international co-operation to reduce the recurrence of such mishaps and ensure safer development of nuclear energy for the future", he said.

International co-operation in nuclear safety had two aspects, Mr. Pribicevic explained - post-accident remedial action to mitigate the consequence, and long-term, comprehensive safety measures embracing all stages from planning, designing, siting and construction of nuclear energy facilities to maintenance, nuclear waste disposal, health and environmental issues, and co-operation in such areas as infrastructure, manpower training, technological know-how and safety mechanisms.

Several initiatives in those areas had been taken by the IAEA in recent months, the Chairman pointed out. The IAEA General Conference, at a special session, had noted the central role of the IAEA in encouraging and facilitating international co-operation in peaceful nuclear-energy use.

"Nuclear clouds, as the international community has come to recognize, do not respect geographical boundaries", declared Mr. Pribicevic. "The possible effects and consequences of an accident are of equal concern to all States, including those which may not be carrying out any nuclear activities on their territories ... The safe development of nuclear energy is thus a matter of interest and concern for the international community as a whole."

The Conference, "even in terms of its timing", was ideally suited, he said, for reviewing all relevant issues and endorsing principles, programmes and

proposals on future peaceful and safe development of nuclear energy in all parts of the world. A successful Conference would lead to broadening the scope of activities of the IAEA and strengthening its central role as the principal instrument for implementing and co-ordinating the decisions and recommendations of the Conference.

Peace-keeping body

mandate renewed

The General Assembly on 3 December renewed the mandate of the 33-member Special Committee on Peace-keeping Operations, in adopting resolution 41/67 without a vote.

Established in 1965, the Special Committee has worked since 1966 on guidelines to govern the conduct of United Nations peace-keeping operations, devoting attention to practical implementation of such operations.