Russia Is Set to Propose Stricter Rules for Reactors

Power plants would become safer if the 29 countries that operate them accepted common and binding safety standards, Sergei V. Kiriyenko, the director of the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom, said at a briefing for journalists Wednesday in Moscow.

These countries should also commit to detailed procedures for releasing information about a leak, given the propensity of radiation to float across borders, Mr. Kiriyenko said.

The third proposal calls for governments to commit to taking the lead in responding to accidents. That would supplant the role typically taken by the operator or owner of a power plant. Governments, under the proposal, would intervene once a disaster passed Level 4 on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s ’seven-level scale of nuclear disasters. Level 4 is defined as an “accident with local consequences,” while Level 5 is an “accident with wider consequences.”

In laying out these ideas, which Russia plans to present to the Group of 8 industrialized nations at a meeting this spring in France, Mr. Kiriyenko elaborated on a proposal announced Tuesday by the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, at a ceremony observing the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

The setting for that ceremony, near the ruins of the reactor, couched the Russian proposal as a magnanimous effort — the latest of many — to share the lessons of Chernobyl with a world at risk of nuclear blunders. Russia is also deeply invested in the continued global expansion of nuclear power, because it exports uranium fuel and reactor technology.

Vast commercial interests are tied up in the continued adoption of nuclear power and development of reactors, particularly in emerging markets, which are the primary customers of Russia’s nuclear exports. Those business prospects help make Russia particularly committed to improving safety, rather than letting demand disappear in a din of protests against nuclear power.

The Russians say they are now building more nuclear power plants than any other country, or 15 of the 60 new reactors under construction around the world today.

Rosatom says it has an additional 30 firm orders for reactors and plans to sell more.

Rosatom sells reactors for $2 billion to $5 billion. A subsidiary, Tvel, exports about $3 billion worth of low-enriched uranium fuel each year, or about 17 percent of global demand.

Some of that market is already drying up. Germany will close seven aging plants ahead of schedule, and Italy has extended indefinitely a moratorium on building plants.

Mr. Medvedev’s proposal, though announced in Chernobyl, may have been aimed at seizing some initiative in the public debate to restore confidence in the technology, more than at making a significant contribution to safety.

The proposal is intended to amend several decades-old global treaties, like the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage of 1963, to render International Atomic Energy Agency safety standards binding on the countries with civilian nuclear power plants.

Jeremy Gordon, an analyst with the World Nuclear Association, a trade group in London, said most national nuclear regulators already adhered to International Atomic Energy Agency standards, making it unclear why they would need to be made binding.

“Anybody who is using nuclear power in a serious way is already well within those guidelines,” he said. Of the Russian proposal, he added, “I could not put my finger on a concrete change that would make.”

For now, safety recommendations set by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based group known for its work to prevent the proliferation of bomb-making knowledge and materials, are voluntary for most countries. This is in contrast to nonproliferation rules, which are enforced by agency inspections and come under treaty obligations.