Brussels, 14/03/2010 (Agence Europe) - The nuclear crisis generated in Japan by the massive earthquake and tsunami on Friday 11 March 2011 and the fear of a new Chernobyl-type disaster have raised questions about nuclear safety in Europe, giving fresh impetus to anti-nuclear arguments. EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger will chair a meeting of EU energy ministers on Tuesday attended by member states' nuclear safety agencies and nuclear power plant operators to look at what happened in Japan and the EU's preparedness for similar disasters. The Greens at the European Parliament (EP) are calling for the scrapping of nuclear energy and Conservative and Social Democrat MEPs are calling for stress tests for nuclear power plants in the EU.
As the threat of a new Chernobyl hovers over a devastated Japan, Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger set the cat amongst the pigeons on Monday by saying that he had not ruled out the closing down of nuclear power plants in the EU. In an interview on Germany radio (Deutschlandfunk), he said that the pictures from Japan provided proof that the worst can happen and if we agree that this event has changed the world and shed doubt on a lot that we as an industrial society believed to be safe and controllable, then we cannot rule anything out.
Oettinger called EU energy ministers to Brussels on Tuesday along with national energy safety agencies and nuclear power representatives to examine the nuclear situation in Japan and consider whether Europe is prepared to cope with events of that type. In a press release, the European Commission explains that the idea is to get first-hand information about emergency plans and safety measures in place, including information about inspections by national authorities, safety standards in the event of earthquakes and emergency cooling of nuclear reactors. Oettinger will brief the European Parliament's energy committee later on Tuesday, after the coordination meeting scheduled to start at 2.00pm.
Over the weekend, the European Commission set up a coordination group to keep national governments informed and to ensure the EU has the same information. The Commission says it has been receiving regular updates about the situation in Japan from the IAEA. On the danger of a nuclear disaster in Europe, the Commission points out that in EU Directive 2009/71/Euratom on an EU nuclear power plant safety mechanism, governments are responsible for their own rules and for granting permits to build and run nuclear power plants. They are also responsible for inspections. The EU is responsible for protection from radiation and back-up measures.
The disaster in Japan is a serious setback for the global nuclear industry which has made a comeback in recent years given the urgency of climate change and as memories of the nuclear disasters of 1979 at Three Mile Island in the United States and then Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986 fade. The Japanese situation has generated a wide debate on nuclear safety in Europe, where there are no fewer than 143 nuclear power stations in operation - 17 in Germany, 7 in Belgium, 2 in Bulgaria, 8 in Spain, 4 in Finland, 58 in France, 4 in Hungary, one in the Netherlands, 6 in the Czech Republic, 2 in Romania, 4 in Slovakia, 1 in Slovenia, 10 in Sweden and 19 in the United Kingdom - and where the building of even more nuclear power plants is being planned in countries already using nuclear energy and others, like Italy, that had given up on nuclear energy in the past. Poland, too, is planning to join in. The disaster has given new impetus to opponents of nuclear power. In France, the second biggest nuclear power plant builder (after the United States), ecologist Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Greens at the European Parliament, has called for a referendum on the future of nuclear power. Special adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Henri Guaino, says that the Japanese disaster could help the French nuclear industry because security is key for French nuclear power company Areva, the world's top nuclear power station construction company, and EDF, the world's leading generator of nuclear power. Last year, Germany extended the active life of the country's nuclear power stations and Berlin says it is closely monitoring the situation in Japan. Likewise for the UK, where the British government had been planning a vast programme to renew ageing nuclear power plants. In Italy, rare among EU countries because of its high risk of earthquakes and the only G8 country that does not have a nuclear power plant, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is planning to increase the proportion of the country's electricity generated from nuclear power to 25%, but the country is not reported to be re-examining these plans yet.
Backing the idea of stress tests for nuclear power plants in Europe to see how they would fare in the event of an earthquake, Austrian Environment Minister Nikolaus Berlakovich was joined by Conservatives and Social Democrats at the EP on Monday. German MEP Jo Leinen (S&D) said that the EU's nuclear power plant safety standards had to be revised because although there was no risk of a tsunami, there were other dangers, like terrorist attacks. Austrian MEPs Richard Seeber and Pieter Liese (both EPP) said that stress tests were needed for every nuclear power station in Europe, asking how long cooling systems would operate in the event of a power blackout and calling for better emergency response mechanisms in European nuclear power stations than in Japan. (E.H./transl.fl)