Follow-up of the peer review of the stress tests performed on European nuclear power plants

The national European regulators and the European Commission as ENSREG have endorsed the peer review report and the recommendations that finalised the stress test review and published a joint statement dated 26 April 2012, which concluded that follow-up activities would occur through an action plan. The European Council of 28 and 29 June 2012 “invited Member States to ensure the full and timely implementation of the recommendations presented in the report from ENSREG further to the completion of the nuclear safety stress tests. The Commission and ENSREG have agreed that further work is needed.”

The ENSREG Action Plan, finally approved on 1 August 2012, will assist in assuring that the conclusions from the stress tests and their peer review result in improvements in safety across European nuclear power plants. It will also assist, through further peer review, in ensuring that the recommendations and suggestions from the stress test peer review are addressed by national regulators and ENSREG in a consistent manner.

The Action Plan specifies the need for country specific action plans (National Action Plans) to be made publicly available by the end of 2012 and to peer review these Action Plans via a common discussion at a dedicated ENSREG workshop to share lessons learned on the implementation of post-Fukushima safety improvements. It also specifies fact-finding follow-up site visits in order to better prepare for the peer review workshop. 

This ENSREG workshop to discuss the National Action Plans took place in Brussels from 22-26 April 2013 (a statement from Mr Hartmut Klonk, President of the National Action Plans workshop is available here). Stakeholders had the opportunity to put questions and to file comments regarding the Peer Review of National Action Plans from 25 February - 20 March 2013 via the ENSREG website. 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 ENSREG workshop, commendable issues and challenges were identified. ENSREG considered the workshop to have been a highly successful exercise and endorsed a follow-up peer review in 2015. This follow-up would ascertain the value of the technical solutions arising from the present in-depth studies, before the implementation of findings in the form of major hardware changes in nuclear power plants. ENSREG approved a National Action Plan Workshop summary report which has also been presented at the ENSREG conference in June 2013.

ENSREG decided to update quarterly the stress tests follow-up on the ENSREG website.

All relevant documents will continue to be published.

Link to the ENSREG Action Plan.

Link to the Follow-up fact-finding visit reports.

The National Action Plans of the participating countries can be found under the relevant Country Specific Reports.