Brussels, 03/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is expected on 12 May to unveil the criteria for the stress tests to which the 143 nuclear reactors operating will be subjected. The results of the tests will be delivered by December. Though the inclusion among these criteria of cyber-attack and plane crashes is still “an open question”, Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger has promised a “strong draft”.
Speaking in Gödöllõ on Monday, where he was taking part in the informal meeting of the Energy Council under Hungarian chairmanship, Oettinger promised a “strong draft” for stress testing EU nuclear power plants against various risks, including those which hit Japan on 11 March - earthquake and tidal wave - causing the continuing nuclear incident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The arrangements for the stress tests, on which the Commission is still working along with European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG), will be published on 12 May. Then, at the end of May, the Commission will hold discussions with neighbouring countries which already have nuclear power stations (Armenia, Russia, Switzerland and Ukraine) or which are planning nuclear plants (Belarus and Turkey) with a view to extending the stress tests beyond EU borders.
In the meantime, the issue of including cyber-attack and plane crashes in the criteria, as Oettinger wants, remains to be decided. The draft stress test criteria proposed at the start of April by the Western European Nuclear Regulators' Association (WENRA), on which the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) wielded great influence, do not include the possibilities of cyber-attack or plane crashes. However, WENRA wants the resistance of power stations to be tested in three areas: natural phenomena (storms, earthquakes, flooding, etc), the loss of safety system (extended total loss of the cooling system or of electrical power) and serious accident management issues (damage to fuel in the reactor, difficulties in lowering the temperature of the cooling ponds where spent fuel is placed, etc). Before an exchange of views with ministers at lunchtime on Tuesday, Oettinger acknowledged that the matter has still to be settled, indicating that it was “an open question”. The only certainty at this stage is that the results of the stress tests will be presented at the European Council of 9 December. (E.H./transl.rt)