Daejeon City Mandates Disclosure of Internal Status at Nuclear Research Institute and Obligatory Situation Reporting to Local Governments

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The external disclosure of the status of radioactive waste storage and treatment at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute and mandatory situation reporting to the relevant local governments will be enforced.

Daejeon City announced on the 16th that it will revise and implement the "Nuclear Safety Agreement" with these contents.

Previously, the city, Yuseong-gu, and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute signed the Nuclear Safety Agreement in May 2017. The core of the agreement is to ensure citizen safety during the operation of nuclear facilities in the Daejeon area and to maintain mutual understanding and close cooperation between the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute and the relevant local governments.

However, despite the agreement, recently, continuous radioactive material leakage accidents such as cesium have occurred inside the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, and issues such as negligence in managing radioactive liquid waste and lack of communication have been fully exposed.

Accordingly, the city added safety management regulations for liquid waste storage and treatment facilities to the radioactive waste management regulations (Article 3) and established a system (new Article 6) to disclose to local citizens the status, discharge plans, and results of radioactive waste stored at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute to strengthen communication and cooperation systems.

In addition, the revision includes mandatory reporting (Article 9) to the city and Yuseong-gu when abnormal signs equivalent to an accident occur.

Before the revision, the city established a hotline between Yuseong-gu and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute and formed a permanent consultative body with the institute’s safety general manager to build a nuclear facility incident and accident information sharing system.

Furthermore, to fundamentally strengthen nuclear facility safety, the city plans to legislate a nuclear facility monitoring system in close cooperation with the local political community.

Park Wol-hoon, Director of the Citizen Safety Office of the city, said, “Through the revision of the agreement, we will strengthen communication with the Nuclear Research Institute and systematize safety management for all radioactive waste. In addition, we will further solidify the cooperation system between local governments and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute to responsibly fulfill promises made to citizens.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.