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Russia to propose nuclear plan at G8

MOSCOW, Apr 26 – Russia is to propose a plan to boost safety at the world\’s nuclear power plants at the G8 summit in May, President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday on the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe.

"In May of this year Russia will come forward with a concrete initiative on increasing security of nuclear power stations at the Group of Eight summit," the Kremlin quoted Medvedev as saying in a statement.

"They will be related to increasing responsibility of the countries using nuclear energy," Medvedev said.

Among other things, the countries should bear responsibility for reacting to nuclear accidents in a timely and efficient way, Medvedev said.

"We also believe that additional security requirements are needed for the construction and maintenance of nuclear power plants."

Those rules, the Kremlin chief said, should be spelled out in international legal documents and made obligatory for all states.

He added that international organisations including the International Atomic Energy Agency should be tasked with enforcing those rules.

He said "principles of information openness and absolute transparency (should) become the norm for the work of all nuclear power stations in the world."

The Soviet Union famously stayed silent on the Chernobyl disaster for three days, with the official news agency TASS only reporting an accident there on April 28, after the Forsmark nuclear plant in Sweden recorded unusually high radiation.

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The operator of Japan\’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, Tokyo Electrical Power Co. (TEPCO), has also come under fire over its information policy after the accident triggered by a killer quake this year.

Speaking at a forum on China\’s southern Hainan island earlier this month, Medvedev said he would soon hand over to Russia\’s partners proposals on the development of peaceful nuclear energy "taking into account the Japanese tragedy."

The nuclear crisis in Japan sparked global concern about the viability of nuclear energy, and prompted some countries to carry out inspections at their atomic facilities.

Medvedev said in China that ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan should not hinder the development of atomic energy and stop "human progress."

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