Ahead of the crucial meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEAA) which starts today in Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, has greeted the recent accord between the IAEA and Iran as "a significant step forward".
That leaves the NSG and the board of the IAEA to decide whether to uphold clear anti-nuclear rules, or be complicit in their further unravelling.
As Mohamed ElBaradei, the outgoing head of the IAEA, admitted this week, he had reached a "stalemate" with the Iranians, who were no longer cooperating on open issues.
These figures seem almost as unlikely as the derisory "only 51 deaths so far" of the IAEA-led report.
In the course of the 24 years which have passed since the Chernobyl event, many multifaceted studies have been carried out, and a summary of the effects of the catastrophe has been presented in many reports by the IAEA and the Nuclear Energy Agency [ 23, 25].
As the IAEA's primary role is the promotion of nuclear power, playing down the effects of the world's worst nuclear disaster is part of its agenda.
Whatever the outcome of the forthcoming IAEA meeting, no end is in sight to the standoff over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
He helped develop what Glenn Seaborg later called "an unprecedented atmosphere of rapport" at the IAEA and played a crucial role in the adoption of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970.
Amano, a former Japanese diplomat, said he wants to improve the flow of information to the IAEA about the crisis.
A Level 7 accident, according to the INES scale, is typified by a "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects". The scale was established by the IAEA about 20 years ago, but its guidelines leave much room for interpretation, nuclear experts say.
