Proposed procedure on peer reviews agreed upon. Recommendations put forward by the three ENSREG Working Groups endorsed. Draft Work Programme for 2012/13 adopted. Chairperson mandate extended exceptionally for six months.
At the 16th ENSREG meeting, the proposed procedure on peer reviews of EU nuclear power plant stress tests, elaborated within the Task Force led by Mr. J. Laaksonen (STUK), was after minor modifications agreed upon. The main outcome will be the creation of topical and country review teams overseen by a Board which will be headed by Mr Philippe Jamet (ASN) as Chairman and Petr Krs (SÙJB) as project manager. Representatives of non nuclear countries as well as the European Commission will also sit on the board.
Peer reviews will be conducted in two phases: In the first, so called horizontal phase, three groups of experts will review the three main topics of national reports (1. Resistance to external events, 2. Electric power supply and ultimate heat sink in case of emergency and 3. Severe accident management) to assess the comparability of the results. In a second phase, so called vertical country reviews will focus on individual country reports as whole to verify consistency with the methodology.The peer review process is expected to be finished by the end of April 2012, so that the European Commission can report to the European Council in June.
ENSREG was informed of and took several decisions related to the progress made by its three Working Groups:
– The Working Group on Nuclear Safety progressed towards fulfilling its Work Programme tasks on the implementation of the Nuclear Safety Directive. ENSREG agreed guidelines for Member States on how to report their implementation of the directive. A schedule for the periodic peer reviews of the national safety legal framework is about to be finalised between EU Member States and the IAEA, covering the period 2011 – 2021.
– The Working Group on Waste Management informed ENSREG members about the seminar "Better use of the Joint Convention in the EU" to be held in Vienna on 2-4 November 2011.
– The Working Group on Transparency reported on the restructuring of the ENSREG Website and the creation of a subsite dedicated to Stress tests. In addition, ENSREG agreed on a Working Paper on the Transparency aspects of EU Stress tests. The proposal for Guidance for implementation of Article 8 Safety Directive was also agreed.
Representatives of DG Development and Cooperation, the Commission service responsible for the implementation of the Instrument for Nuclear Safety, discussed the involvement of ENSREG in giving strategic direction to the programme. The Chairman, Mr. Andrej Stritar, was unanimously asked to exceptionally agree upon extension of his mandate as Chairperson of ENSREG until the completion of the stress tests exercise in June 2012.
Please find attached the full statement in PDF format.
