Nuclear mattersAgreement reached on European Union stress tests
Yesterday European Union officials reached an agreement on the parameters of nuclear stress tests and will soon begin conducting safety reviews at nuclear power plants; the tests will review the resiliency of 143 nuclear facilities in the face of natural disasters like earthquakes and tornadoes in addition to terrorist attacks; the move to conduct safety reviews was triggered by the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan; events in Japan sparked anti-nuclear protests across Europe and leaders have called for a “comprehensive and transparent risk and safety assessment” at all atomic energy facilities in the European Union
Yesterday European Union officials reached an agreement on the parameters of nuclear stress tests and will soon begin conducting safety reviews at nuclear power plants.
The tests will review the resiliency of 143 nuclear facilities in the face of natural disasters like earthquakes and tornadoes in addition to terrorist attacks.
Guenther Oettinger, the EU’s Energy Commissioner, said, “The quality of these stress tests is such as to fulfill the requirement of the EU citizens to live in a safe environment.”
The move to conduct safety reviews was triggered by the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan where the 11 March earthquake damaged critical cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. For two months, radiation has continued to spew from the damaged reactors in what is the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
Events in Japan sparked anti-nuclear protests across Europe and leaders have called for a “comprehensive and transparent risk and safety assessment” at all atomic energy facilities in the European Union.
Germany has gone so far as to temporarily suspend operations at its oldest nuclear plants.
Officials struggled to come to an agreement over the specifics of the nuclear stress tests as atomic energy officials maintained that the tests should focus on natural disasters, but officials like Oettinger insisted that they include man-made disasters like terrorist attacks.
Atomic regulators and the EU energy commissioners eventually reached a compromise where stress tests would include potential damage from terrorist attacks like plane crashes or explosives, but measures to prevent such attacks would be addressed separately by national security officials.
In a statement, the Energy Commission said, “The aim is to learn from what happened in Japan and help prevent that a similar accident can happen in Europe.”
It added, “One of the most important lessons to be drawn is that the unthinkable can happen— that two natural disasters can hit at the same time and knock out the electrical-power supply system completely.”
The stress tests will occur in three phases. In the first phase, plant operators will answer a questionnaire, in the second phase national regulators will inspect each plant, and in the final phase, national regulators will generate a report on the plant’s safety measures that will be submitted for a peer review by other EU nuclear regulators.
Currently fourteen countries in the European Union receive power from nuclear power stations, and while it is up to the individual country whether it uses nuclear energy or not, nuclear safety is a shared responsibility across the European Union.
