Nuclear Safety Warning in Iran Accidents and Radiological Disaster In Progress

We are deeply concerned about consequences of various accidents within any of the Islamic regime's nuclear facilities. Even without any accidents, we doubt it if the regime has imposed enough safeguards for radiation workers or people living around nuclear facilities. The reason is that based on the research done on conferences and papers written in the fields of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) and nuclear safety in Iran, very few papers have addressed these subjects. Even those papers that addressed the subject of nuclear safety seemed to have addressed a specific issue rather than covering all aspects of nuclear safety or PRA. For example, one paper addressed the consequences of LOCA (Loss of Coolant Accidents) at Bushehr-1 NPP. However, there were no indications of studies for accidents scenarios initiated by external events, internal non-nuclear related explosions resulting in radiological contamination, Loss of Offsite Power (and Station Blackout), ATWS (Anticipated Transient without Scram) or secondary system failures, etc.

We are gravely concerned about the regimes programs for implementation and execution of ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) in various nuclear facilities. The Islamic Republic regime has demonstrated no respect for human life especially Iranian life, Iranian natural resources or environment during the past 28 years. Last year the regime cut down ~10,000 trees around Lavizan facilities. Reports out of Iran indicated that the entire area was severely contaminated and the regime had to cut down trees and remove topsoil in order to hide this leak from the IAEA. In addition, great majority (if not all) of the equipment, from centrifuges to valves, pumps, etc. are purchased from Pakistan, India, China, N. Korea and at best from Russia. All these countries especially Russians are notorious with unreliable, high maintenance equipment (examples: refer to the recent problems with the Russian side of International Space Station, or low reliability of Chinese and Korean missiles, etc.). With the Islamic Republic regime's track record on maintaining Iranian passenger planes, these nuclear facilities are ticking time bombs.

We therefore demand that all the Islamic Republics nuclear activities (commercial or government related) be stopped immediately, until such time that the regime can prove and demonstrate that enough safety measures have been developed and implemented into the design, operation and maintenance of all nuclear facilities throughout Iran. Further the Islamic regime should demonstrate that contingency plans including mitigation of consequences of catastrophic initiating events (such as seismic events), evacuation and recovery measures are established and ready to be implemented.

Aside from the political agenda, the IAEA has a moral and humanitarian responsibility to regulate requirements and oversee activities that will assure health and welfare of the workers and citizens around nuclear facilities. We therefore challenge the IAEA to provide detail safety inspection on all Iranian nuclear facilities and publish quarterly progress reports.