26 Apr (NucNet): A final peer review report into stress tests carried out on European nuclear plants highlights four main areas for improvement to be explored across Europe, it was announced today.
In a joint statement the European Commission and European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (Ensreg) said they endorsed the peer review board report, which was made public today. It was prepared in response to a European Council request in March 2011 asking for stress tests to be carried out because of the accident at Fukushima-Daiichi in Japan.
The four main areas for improvement highlighted in the report are:
• Issuing Western European Regulators’ Association (Wenra) guidance on the assessment of natural hazards and margins taking account existing International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines;
• Underlining the importance of periodic safety reviews;
• Implementing measures to protect containment integrity;
• Minimising accidents resulting from natural hazards and limiting their consequences.
The joint statement said national action plans have already been or will be shortly defined in all countries to deal with these four recommendations.
Ensreg and the EC said full implementation of measures identified in the report to improve safety will be “a long-term process”.
They said all countries have taken “significant steps” to improve the safety of their plants, with varying degrees of practical implementation.
As a result of the stress tests, measures to increase robustness of plants have already been decided or are being considered. Such measures include provisions of additional mobile equipment to prevent or mitigate severe accidents, installation of hardened fixed equipment, and the improvement of severe accident
Ensreg and the EC have agreed to propose an action plan “in the national, the European and the global context” that would require implementation of the recommendations in the report and implementation of the IAEA action plan on nuclear safety, which was approved in September 2011.
The action plan would also propose “additional site visits as agreed”, the joint statement said.
Ensreg and the EC said the stress tests and peer review have been “a rigorous review” of the safety of nuclear plants.
The tests were carried out through different steps including an assessment by operators and an independent review of those assessments by national regulators.
Country peer reviews were carried out from March to April 2011, with each country visited by a team of eight peer reviewers for several days.
The 15 European Union countries with nuclear power plants as well as Switzerland and Ukraine performed the stress tests and were subjected to the peer review. The operators submitted their final assessments on 31 October 2011 and the regulators submitted their final national reports on 31 December 2011. The peer review started on 1 January 2012.
The final peer review report is online:
www.ensreg.eu/sites/default/files/EU%20Stress%20Test%20Peer%20Review%20Final%20Report.pdf
