March 23, 2020 / By mobanmarket
Nuclear safety standards added to next week’s European Council agenda.Japan’s nuclear woes spur EU safety review
The European Union’s attitude towards nuclear energy is coming under review in the wake of the disaster unfolding at the Fukushima plant in Japan.
The issue of safety standards for nuclear power stations has been hurriedly added to the agenda of the European Council to held in Brussels on 24-25 March. The leaders of the EU’s national governments will also discuss how to provide economic and humanitarian help to Japan, which suffered its biggest natural disaster on Friday (11 March).
In the wake of an earthquake and a devastating tsunami, the nuclear reactors at Fukushima suffered a series of explosions and fires as their cooling systems failed.
Günther Oettinger, the European commissioner for energy, told the European Parliament yesterday (16 March) that the Fukushima site was “out of control”, adding “we are somewhere between a disaster and a major disaster”.
Fukushima’s light water reactors are of a type commonly found in Europe, and a meeting between the European Commission, representatives of member states’ nuclear safety agencies, energy ministries and the nuclear industry in Brussels on Tuesday (15 March), decided to carry out stress tests to assess the safety of the 143 nuclear power plants across the EU.
Fourteen of the EU’s 27 states have nuclear power stations: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
France alone has 58 of the EU’s 143 plants, which provide 75% of its energy, while the UK has 19, Germany 17 and Sweden ten. There are six plants currently under construction: two in Bulgaria, one in Finland, one in France and two in Slovakia.
Oettinger said: “We want to look at the risks and safety issues in the light of events in Japan.”
Responsibility for nuclear safety rests principally with the member states, but an emergency meeting of the EU’s energy ministers has been called for 21 March in Brussels to discuss nuclear safety and the stress tests. The ministers responsible for EU affairs will also discuss nuclear issues and ways to help Japan when they meet on the same day to prepare the 24-25 March summit.
Oettinger said that he hoped the stress tests, which will be voluntary, could be carried out as soon as possible, but that would probably be in the second half of this year. The commissioner said that the national governments would have to agree “clear, common standards” for the tests and there would also have to be agreement on recognised independent experts who would be responsible for carrying them out.
The EU agreed a directive on the safety of nuclear installations in 2009, scheduled for implementation by 2014. While responsibility for safety rests with national authorities, member states are required to submit a report to the Commission every three years on progress with safety. They are also required to submit assessments of their national safety frameworks every ten years. Although member states have until July 2014 to implement the directive, Oettinger said that he wanted an interim review of implementation before the deadline and he would propose an extension of the scope of the directive if it was necessary.
The EU is currently discussing a proposal on burying radioactive waste deep underground, on which MEPs are scheduled to give their opinion in May.
Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, has called a meeting of G20 ministers to discuss nuclear energy issues in the coming weeks.
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Oettinger, who is from the same centre-right Christian Democrat party as Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, described as “unusual” Germany’s decision to put off-stream seven nuclear plants built before 1980.
Christian Taillebois, the director for external relations at Foratom, the European nuclear energy association, said that the German decision was “political” because of forthcoming regional elections. “It’s not about safety,” he said, adding that the seven reactors that had been shut down were “as safe” as Germany’s other reactors. He said there was “no need for immediate decisions on the future of nuclear power in Europe”.
The Japanese government formally requested aid from the EU on Tuesday (15 March). Twenty EU member states are providing equipment such as field hospitals, water-purification units and search and rescue teams. Efforts are being co-ordinated by the EU’s civil-protection mechanism.
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