The past fifteen years have seen the international community make steady progress in the formation of a legally binding safety regime. New safety conventions have been concluded to cover, for example, nuclear plant safety, radioactive waste management and spent fuel management. A major challenge for the Agency today is to help countries implement the obligations they undertake through these agreements. Equally important is the need to have agreed detailed safety standards. To help countries put these into practice, we are focusing on peer reviews, expert missions and other advisory approaches.
Radioactive waste is an area being given particularly close attention.
In Spain this March, the IAEA is sponsoring an international conference on the safety of radioactive waste management that will address issues in depth and make recommendations of what needs to be done. It follows a symposium held last year in the Republic of Korea on the technologies of waste management. That symposium reconfirmed that technologies exist for the safe, environmentally sound and cost effective management of radioactive wastes. Important now is an actual demonstration of these technologies, and sustained efforts to keep the public engaged in the formulation and development of waste management programmes. Another important and long standing concern has been the safe transport of radioactive material.