2 Pacts Approved to Handle Nuclear Accidents : One Calls for Prompt Disaster Disclosure, the Other for Swift Emergency Aid

Two new international agreements on nuclear accidents--one designed to ensure prompt disclosure of any future radiation disaster, the other to speed emergency aid to a stricken country--were adopted Friday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The United States, the Soviet Union and 48 other countries immediately signed the agreements. Representatives of most countries with operating nuclear power plants said they will voluntarily observe the early-warning agreement until it formally takes effect on Oct. 27; the other agreement will require legislation by many of the participating states. Both agreements are subject to ratification by the U.S. Senate.

The prompt-warning agreement, called the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, does not apply to nuclear weapons. But in response to objections raised by many governments, the five states with nuclear weapons--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China--pledged to disclose any such accident that appears likely to affect a neighboring country.

The agreements, rushed to completion in the unusually short time of four months, grew out of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union last April 26, which spread radioactive fallout across the European continent and intensified worldwide concern about the safety of nuclear power plants.

Many Western governments voiced indignation at the Soviet Union’s delay of nearly three days in disclosing the accident, which so far has led to 31 deaths of Soviet workers at the plant and firemen who fought to extinguish the burning reactor.

Restoring Public Confidence

In three days of discussion that preceded the IAEA’s adoption of the agreements, the nuclear authorities of a number of governments emphasized the importance the agreements would play in restoring public confidence in nuclear energy, which most delegations said remains essential to modern economies.

Hans Blix, director general of the IAEA, said that among the agency’s 113 members, “there is no mood of dismantling nuclear power.”

“The view among the vast majority of nations, with few exceptions, is that nuclear energy is an indispensable source of energy for the future,” Blix went on. “No one here speaks of 100% safety. Everything can be improved, but there is always some residual risk in everything we do.”

The early-warning agreement requires nations that sign it to notify the IAEA and neighboring countries “forthwith” in the event of a major radiation release, but only if contamination is likely to cross international boundaries and is judged to be of “radiological safety significance” for another country.

The agreement also allows any country that has a major nuclear accident to insist that information it gives other governments be kept confidential.

“This was the common denominator that was achievable today,” Blix told a news conference after the agreements were adopted by consensus among the 94 government delegations present in Vienna’s Hofburg palace.

There was no formal vote on the agreements, but Blix said he is not aware that any member government of the agency, an affiliate of the United Nations, opposed them.

The IAEA members include the Soviet Union and two of its constituent republics, the Ukraine and Byelorussia, which are accorded the status of sovereign countries as they are in the U.N. General Assembly. By coincidence, the two republics were the regions most heavily affected by the Chernobyl accident. Soviet officials representing the two regions were among those who signed the agreements on Friday.

The conference turned aside efforts by several countries to strengthen the early-warning agreement by requiring disclosure of nuclear weapons accidents and lowering the scale of an accident that governments would be obliged to report.

The Netherlands, for example, called on IAEA member states to voluntarily report “all nuclear accidents which lead to an off-site emergency response,” beyond the perimeter of the facility where it occurs--rather than waiting until contamination appears likely to cross national borders.

Proposals for Future Talks

All such proposals were referred to the IAEA’s executive body, the board of governors, for future discussion.

Soviet authorities left unclear whether the agreement would have made any difference if it had been in force when the Chernobyl reactor exploded on April 26.

The head of the Soviet delegation, Deputy Premier Boris Y. Shcherbina, who led a government commission that investigated the accident, maintained that the delay in disclosing it was due to a failure to understand the scale of the accident, and to realize that contamination would go beyond Soviet borders.

The Soviet Union had helped draft guidelines on reporting nuclear accidents which the IAEA published in 1984, and which served as the basis for the new early-warning agreement.

Asked what difference the agreement might have made if it had been in effect in April, Blix, the IAEA director general, noted that “there is a difference between guidelines and an obligation.”

Recommended Procedures

The second agreement, on emergency aid, sets out recommended procedures for requesting and managing assistance, and grants immunity from arrest, detention, legal proceedings and taxation for people involved in providing aid to a stricken country.

It also obliges the country requesting aid to return equipment it borrows, when possible, and to pay promptly for any help that is not donated free of charge by other countries.

There are also provisions for settling disputes arising from emergency aid.

Blix said the two agreements constitute one of several steps the agency is taking to improve nuclear safety worldwide in the aftermath of Chernobyl.

In addition to a detailed technical study of the causes of the accident, already completed, he said the agency has raised its safety budget to $8 million a year from $6 million and will step up the voluntary inspections it carries out on operating procedures at nuclear power plants from three a year to about 12 in 1987 and 20 a year by 1988.

390 A-Plants

There are currently about 390 operating nuclear power plants in the world.

Blix said the agency will also consider setting mandatory minimum safety standards for its member nations, and may also take up the “difficult” question of liability in nuclear accidents.

West European governments have said the Chernobyl disaster has caused them economic losses running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, mainly from losses of contaminated food. The Soviet Union has refused to consider compensating Western countries on the ground that food restrictions were unnecessary. The Soviets also argue that there is no international legal mechanism for determining liability in nuclear accidents.