Strasbourg, 09/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - The nuclear stress test initiative has caused controversy with the reluctance of the states which use atomic power to take account of scenarios involving cyber-attacks and aeroplane crashes, which Commissioner Oettinger wants to include in the test criteria.
The European Commission and the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) must agree by consensus, by 11 May, on the criteria for the resistance tests (stress tests) on the 143 nuclear reactors located within the EU against various risks, including those which hit Japan on 11 March of this year - an earthquake and a tsunami - and which caused the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power station.
Whereas Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger wants to include the hypothetical scenarios of a terrorist attack, an IT attack and an aeroplane crash among the test criteria, the Western European Nuclear Regulators' Association (WENRA) wants to see the power stations' robustness tested against just three scenarios: natural phenomena, a breakdown of safety systems and serious accident.
In an interview with the German weekly newspaper Der Spiegel which came out this weekend, Oettinger nonetheless pledged to defend his idea. “I will not be putting my signature to any stress test which does not satisfy my expectations and those of the general public at large. I do not see that testing for man-made disasters should be merely optional”, he stressed. Oettinger is due to meet NGOs and the presidents of the political groups of the European Parliament in Strasbourg this Tuesday to garner support for his initiative. The commissioner is also prepared to put forward a binding regulation in 2011, as provided for by the mandate conferred upon him by the European leaders. For the nuclear member states, the root cause seems to be clear. France and the UK, two of the largest nuclear powers, and which are calling for the stress tests to be watered down, have the support of all of the WENRA countries. (E.H./transl.fl)