Nuclear safety and security

Edwin Lyman is a physicist and director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The science advocacy organization has served as a nuclear safety watchdog for decades.

Well, UCS doesn't take a position for or against nuclear energy, but we do think that nuclear energy has to meet very strict safety and security standards if it is going to play any significant role at all in the future.

And that requires, first and foremost, an independent and technically rigorous safety regulator.

A report by the UN Nuclear Energy Watchdog has warned of a decline in security at facilities in both the United States and Russia.

The IAEA says Russia has produced 4,000 kilograms of weapons-grade nuclear material at a time when global cooperation on nuclear security has gone into decline.

In the US, independent oversight of the nuclear power industry has been cut, it says, while across the nearly 50 countries which operate nuclear plants, Defences against cyber hacking are described as outdated and insufficient.

Police in northern India have arrested a man accused of driving his car into a female motorcyclist outside Delhi in an alleged road rage incident which has triggered national outrage.