Brussels, 24/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - In an open letter to the European Council, which is due to make decisions at its meeting in Brussels on 24-25 March about the stress tests on the nuclear reactors operating in the EU, the European nuclear industry and energy association FORATOM presses member states not to draw hasty conclusions from the crisis in Japan as these could have “significant implications for Europe's energy future”. “Nuclear operators in Europe can confidently claim that all power plants in operation are safe and that the combination of events in Japan is extremely unlikely to occur in Europe”, it goes on, assuring that, following the events in Japan, European utilities have already begun the process of re-assessing the safety of their nuclear power plants “as part of a broader approach of continuous safety assessment and enhancement”. FORATOM says it supports a joint EU-level approach to analyse the consequences of the Japanese nuclear events, and to develop a common framework to re-assess the safety of nuclear power plants “without delay”. The EU nuclear industry welcomes the European Commission's proposal to conduct a specific safety and risk evaluation in order to re-assess the safety of nuclear power plants across Europe. It says it is ready to take part in these tests by helping national safety authorities to jointly define safety criteria. (E.H./transl.rt)