Brussels, 15/04/2011 (Agence Europe) - On 12 May, the European Commission is to unveil the criteria for stress tests on nuclear reactors that are operating, being built or projected in the EU. The French nuclear safety authority (ASN), however, has already given a glimpse of the arrangements for such tests. The meeting of a working group chaired by ASN in early April in association with the Western European Nuclear Regulator's Association (WENRA) initiated the definition of stress test specifications - exiting from the criteria for a hypothetical cyber-attack or air crash. WENRA wants the resistance of power plants to be assessed in three possible situations: - aggression from natural phenomena (storms, earthquakes, flooding), the loss of security systems (cooling or electrical power supply) and serious accident (damage to reactor fuel, difficult cooling of tanks for depositing spent fuel). To rapidly draw lessons from the Fukushima disaster, placed at level 7 on the scale of nuclear incidents, the European safety authorities will set out the precise specifications for stress tests at the end of April, tests that operators are to carry out within six months. The conclusions will then be examined during three to four months by the European nuclear safety authorities. (E.H./transl.jl)