The massive earthquake in Japan and the vulnerability of the country's nuclear energy sector has raised serious questions about the international aspects of the country’s basic nuclear policy.

By Geraldine Coughlan

Questions are being asked about Japan’s level of disaster preparedness and how victims of the nuclear incidents will be compensated.

Criticism

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has criticised the Japanese government for not giving enough information about its nuclear crisis. In the first hint of international frustration at the pace of updates from Japan, Yukiya Amano, IAEA director-general, told a news conference in Vienna on Wednesday, that he wanted more timely and detailed information and that he was “trying to further improve the communication” with the authorities.

Some experts believe the authorities are playing down the extent of the crisis on the INES scale which ranks nuclear incidents. 

New Laws

The Japanese government established new laws to cope with nuclear emergencies in 1999 after an accident at a uranium processing facility in Tokai killed two workers.

The new law, The Special Act of Emergency Preparedness for Nuclear Disaster, contains specific procedures for such a catastrophe and the corresponding responsibilities of the government.

Flaws

However, anti-nuclear activists claim there are serious flaws in the country’s emergency response system.
"In this seismically-active country, the government refuses to draw up emergency plans taking into account nuclear accidents due to earthquakes,” said Aileen Mioko Smith, director of Green Action, a Japanese citizens’ organization which is campaigning to stop the country's plutonium program.

Compensation

The issue of liability and compensation for victims is also causing concern. Japan’s Nuclear Damage Compensation Law is intended to compensate nuclear damage by nuclear facility operators. Under the compensation regime, the nuclear facility operators are exclusively liable, their liability is unlimited and this liability must be covered by insurance.

Conflict

But this regime conflicts with the Vienna Convention Protocol on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage, which defines the international guidelines on the minimum amount of operator liability, set half a billion US dollars.

Japan is not a party to this Convention because it finds the level of liability to be insufficient. Also, the limitation of liability in the Convention conflicts with the unlimited liability regime under the Japanese Compensation Law.

International help

Yoshio Baba, a researcher at the Japan Energy Law Institute, urges Japan to sign up to international conventions and work more closely with the international community on nuclear damage.

He says that, “in order to ensure rapid and efficient remedies for victims of nuclear incidents in an emergency”, it is desirable to ratify international conventions – “and to form regional frameworks in the area around Japan”.

While Japan was the first country to experience a nuclear attack when atomic bombs were dropped during World War Two, the Union of Concerned Scientists has now expressed fears of a nuclear meltdown today.