Iran and the possibility that a North Korean spy infiltrated a Japanese nuclear power plant are not the only challenges facing Yukiya Amano, the Japanese director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He has major issues across Asia, which is increasingly bullish on nuclear power plants.

The growing list now includes two plants in Bangladesh - in late May, Bangladesh and Russia declared they had signed an agreement to construct them by 2015.

Observers say that to implement nuclear safeguards as well as advise and assist new entrants with regard to safety and security, the IAEA will need additional resources in Asia.

"For states simply expressing an interest in nuclear energy at this stage, without firm plans, the IAEA needs to be able to brief them properly on the demanding requirements for establishing a nuclear energy program, especially if it is being done from scratch. This will help ensure that new entrants are fully aware of the enormous undertaking involved," said Trevor Findlay, director of the Nuclear Energy Futures Project at the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Ontario.

Increased funding would greatly help the IAEA along with state-of-the-art technology and additional personnel both for its inspectorate and for its cadre of experts.

"The IAEA has become increasingly reliant on voluntary contributions over the past several years just to carry out some of its basic functions. If that demand increases while its regular budget continues to be constrained by a zero real-growth policy, it is hard to see how it will be able to keep pace," said Peter Crail, a non-proliferation analyst at the Washington DC-based Arms Control Association.

The US has pressed for doubling the IAEA's budget by 2012, but major donors like the United Kingdom and Canada have pushed back against such increases. Approximately 25% of the IAEA's annual budget is covered by the US Department of State.

This year, the IAEA's budget totals just over US$400 million. It is quite small. In fact, the city of Vienna spends more on its police force in any given year than the IAEA allocates to safeguard the countless tons of nuclear material stored in hundreds of sites around the world. [1]

Amano needs to remind everyone that the entire safeguard situation is easing quite close to a cliff edge.

"Keeping track of declared nuclear materials, and identifying what is accounted for and unaccounted for is still the agency's critical mission," said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, DC. He worries that as more and more nuclear facilities come on line, the agency will continue to fall behind in keeping track of nuclear materials needed to make bombs. "That is trouble," he says.

Detecting any illicit traffic flowing via a nuclear black market in Asia is a priority, too. Malaysia, for example, approved relevant export controls in April, but this came about years after revelations came to light over activities there of the Pakistan-based Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear proliferation network.

Amano leads a team of over 2,200 staff members assigned to six major departments, including safeguards. Sokolski gives the IAEA's safeguard personnel very high marks.

"The quality of safeguard personnel is very high, but they lack the authority and funding they need to tackle their assigned tasks and often the full support of the IAEA Board," said Sokolski.

Many find Amano to be a force for positive change in the IAEA, but the IAEA's board of governors calls the shots. It is the agency's driving force, and it operates by consensus. That said, Amano has a lot of moral suasion, and seems to be more willing to call things as the agency sees it rather than trying to strike some kind of political balance.

"When a country like Iran is not cooperating with its safeguards, it is important for the director general to convey that to the rest of the membership in a forthright manner. The new leadership seems to be more willing to do just that," said Crail.

Amano is trying to position himself as a very different kind of leader and perhaps more assertive than his predecessor, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt. Among other things, he attempted to challenge Iran by stating that the IAEA would start to delve into Iran's missile, warhead development and satellite launch programs. [2]

To reinforce the notion that it is no longer business as usual, for example as far as Iran's dealings with the IAEA are concerned, an IAEA report in late May confirmed that Iran did not notify the IAEA in a timely manner of the decision to construct, or to authorize the construction of, new facilities, and provided only limited design information. The IAEA was also not notified with sufficient time for it to adjust its safeguards procedures for Iran's plan to produce enriched uranium.

Regarding the building by Iran of 10 new uranium-enrichment facilities, the IAEA informed Iran that if a decision to construct new nuclear facilities had been taken, Iran was required to submit information regarding the design and scheduling of the construction. Iran replied that it did not provide the requested information and stated only that it would provide the IAEA with the required information "in due time”.

"It is still too early to comment on the impact that the new IAEA leadership will have, although the firm stand taken with Iran is a positive sign," said Findlay.

North Korea is creating headaches for the IAEA too, according to Findlay, as it continues to pursue nuclear weapons in violation of its previous safeguards and nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, yet remains a member of the IAEA.

India poses a challenge for the IAEA because a large number of nuclear facilities there that were deemed to be for peaceful purposes now require the application of IAEA safeguards. India also appears to be expanding a site where it conducts uranium-enrichment.

According to a recent CIGI report, India currently operates 19 power reactors with four more under construction and 20 in various stages of planning [3]. As many as 34 additional reactors are expected to come online over the next decade or so. Russia has announced its intention to build up to 16 of these new nuclear reactors in India as part of its plan to capture at least a quarter of the new nuclear power business worldwide.

China's planned construction of nuclear plants in Pakistan is another item on the IAEA agenda.

"It is hoped that the Chinese will insist these should be under IAEA safeguards even though Pakistan also has a military program outside of safeguards," said Findlay. "The broader challenge from Pakistan is its demand that it receive the same exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group's nuclear trade restrictions that India has received since the India/US [civilian] nuclear deal."

In effect, this allows India and Pakistan - states outside the NPT which have nuclear weapons - to enjoy one of the most important benefits that had come to be reserved for countries that had joined the treaty and given up the prospect of nuclear weapons - access to nuclear assistance.

"So many countries in the developing world get the sense they were hoodwinked. If you don't join the treaty and develop nuclear weapons, you can still get nuclear technology," said Crail. "But if you do join the treaty, you cannot develop nuclear weapons, you are called on to implement stringent safeguards, and you are asked not to develop certain types of technologies that could be used for nuclear weapons."

South Korea is not developing nuclear weapons - they disclosed years ago that they were producing material that could be used in weapons that were in violation of their safeguards. The issue now, according to Crail, is that South Korea wants to pursue spent fuel reprocessing in order to minimize the nuclear waste its nuclear reactors will produce.

"Since reprocessing produces plutonium, which can be used for weapons, a critically important non-proliferation goal for the US and many other countries as well as the IAEA is to convince other countries not to develop this technology," said Crail. "The US has not provided requested assistance for that purpose, but the issue hasn't been resolved."

If South Korea goes ahead with it, efforts to prevent other countries like Iran from pursuing either enrichment or reprocessing will be greatly hampered.

This is one reason why Amano faces questions about his dual role as a cheerleader for nuclear power and the head of the global agency that oversees nuclear safeguards, safety and security. When Amano addressed the 43rd Annual Conference of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum in April, he said, "Fast reactor technology, for example, has the potential to ensure that energy resources which would last hundreds of years with the technology we are using today will actually last several thousand years. Japan is a leader in this area. I look forward to the restart of the Monju prototype fast reactor before long." [4]

Japan, which has 55 nuclear power plants in operation and more than an estimated 47 tons of plutonium stockpiled from spent nuclear waste, restarted its Monju fast breeder reactor (FBR) in May after a 14-year hiatus.

Immediately, anti-nuclear activists from several countries including Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States called for Tokyo to shut down Monju because FBRs are "breeders" that steadily increase the supply of plutonium, spewing out more than they consume. [5]

Japan is proceeding with its plan to construct a FBR for demonstration purposes by 2025, and to have FBRs ready for commercial operations commencing in 2050. However, a team of three experts points out in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that Japan has been reducing its support recently for its breeder program and shifting back the launch date for commercialization, and yet, there is no plan to cease the project. [6]

Does the restart of Monju make it more difficult for the IAEA to convince South Korea and other countries to stop pursuing their own reprocessing or enrichment programs?

"I am not sure it will make a major difference but it certainly will not help. Japan has been pursuing the dream of a 'plutonium economy' for decades, so Monju is just another small step in what has been a troubled and long-winded process," said Findlay.

Crail would not necessarily say that it will make it more difficult because, at this point, Japan's commitment to a closed fuel cycle and its reliance on an incredibly expensive reprocessing program are already part of the backdrop.

"So, countries that have already made decisions like Japan or France make it difficult to convince others that it is not necessary or desired. Although their experience does allow the US and others to point to how uneconomical reprocessing has been," said Crail. "While the IAEA has sought to promote multilateral approaches that would allow countries to forgo those technologies, it is not the IAEA's role to tell countries they shouldn't develop them."

Russia, France and others have ongoing breeder programs and one is underway in India where expanded weapons-grade plutonium production is specifically mentioned as a justification. China is heading down the same path.

Some argue that the IAEA needs to draw more attention to the downside of this phenomenon.

"The IAEA's head office is not coming clean on the problems facing agency inspectors at the nuclear fuel making plants in Japan or raising flags regarding the plutonium - based fuel making plans of China or ROK [Republic of Korea]," said Sokolski, who testified before a US House sub-committee in May about the future of US international nuclear cooperation.

"The IAEA already cannot detect covert fuel making and annually loses track of many bombs worth of bomb - usable materials at declared nuclear fuel making plants," said Sokolski. "Also, the IAEA still cannot assure continuity of safeguards over spent and fresh reactor fuels at nearly two thirds of the sites it monitors today, nor can the IAEA meet its own timeliness detection goals - goals that are not tough enough in the first place - for specific nuclear materials and activities."

He is calling for the US to play the lead role in strengthening the IAEA "first by clarifying what US intelligence officials assess as exactly what kinds of military diversions the IAEA is capable of detecting in a timely fashion, and whether agency nuclear safeguards goals are tough enough for this purpose."

"This is something the US and congress could require at nearly zero cost to the taxpayer," said Sokolski. "The place to begin is with the law and US nuclear non-proliferation policy."

Amano must deal with other significant problems.

Last year, Richard Meserve, chairman of the International Nuclear Safety Group which serves as the senior advisory panel for the IAEA on nuclear safety approaches, policies and principles, warned of "a current shortfall in trained personnel, creating a challenge for generating companies, architect-engineering firms, vendors, suppliers of all types and regulators."

"This includes not only engineers, but also the skilled craft workers who are essential to nuclear construction. One might expect that market forces will generate the necessary skilled labor over time, but there is a short-term and important need that justifies special educational efforts," said Meserve.

Meserve also raised a red flag with respect to "the need for strong international coordination to ensure that quality standards are satisfied".

"The quality requirements for parts and components that are employed in safety systems at nuclear plants exceed the requirements for parts in normal commerce. But no one regulator, vendor or operator can readily have scrutiny over parts that are sourced from many different countries," said Meserve. [7]

These comments about the availability of trained and competent workers - who have been subjected to thorough background checks and are not working covertly for someone else - as well as about the state of quality control procedures and practices are very important. They shed a different light on the situation that Amano has to address in Asia.

Peter J Brown is a freelance writer from Maine USA.