National Action Plans (NAcP) workshop of 22-26 April 2013
The national European regulators and the European Commission as European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) have endorsed today the summary report of the workshop held in Brussels from 22 to 26 April 2013, which concluded the peer review of post-stress tests national action plans. The summary report is available here.
These action plans, presented by 15 EU Members States, Switzerland and Ukraine, describe the actions planned or implemented at the national level after the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident to improve the safety of nuclear power plants and provide the corresponding schedule. Many actions, in particular analyses and reviews, have been completed or are scheduled for completion by 2014. These analyses will identify further safety improvements, the resulting modifications are expected to be implemented mainly in 2015-2018.
Based on the pre-workshop analysis of each national action plan, on the comments raised by stakeholders as well as the discussions held during the workshop commendable issues and challenges were identified.
ENSREG welcomes the Workshop findings, that the national nuclear safety regulators should make further progress for the following issues:
- Ensuring containment integrity to prevent radioactive release in the environment in case of an accident, e.g. through filtered venting systems;
- Developing requirements for design, qualification and maintenance of mobile equipment as well as design requirements for bunkered equipment in order to cope with emergency situations;
- Demonstrating that the necessary resources and arrangements are in place to cope with simultaneous severe accidents on several installations of the same site in the context of regional devastation resulting from a natural disaster;
- Dealing with large volumes of contaminated water.
ENSREG considers that keeping the envisaged schedule for the implementation of such measures will constitute a challenge for all European countries, notably because of uncertainties related to on-going investigations and analyses. Also, implementation of hardware improvements will deploy substantial industry capabilities in a short time span. In this respect, the prioritisation between improvements already launched and new actions originating from lessons learned from the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident will also be crucial. As all participating countries will update their national action plans, a second workshop in 2015 or later to peer review these plans can further increase transparency.
Updated 28 May 2013
