Nuclear safety, the European Authorities compared. Looking towards what happens beyond the EU.

The 39th half-yearly periodical meeting of ENSREG (European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group) was held yesterday in Brussels, attended by the heads of the national nuclear safety Authorities of the EU Member States.

For Italy, Stefano Laporta, coordinator of the Inspectorate Council and chairman of the Working Group on radioactive waste and decommissioning, and Lamberto Matteocci, ISIN deputy director, intervened.

Among the highlights discussed during the meeting was the approval of the next Topical Peer Review (TPR), a nuclear safety exercise introduced in Europe after the post-Fukushima stress tests which, for the period 2023 - 2024, will be dedicated to aging of nuclear plants. In this context, specific action plans are foreseen that the Member States will be required to implement, monitoring timing and methods.

The ENSREG meeting also allowed the representatives of the nuclear regulatory authorities to discuss stress tests and action plans outside the community context, with particular attention to the nuclear power plants of Turkey, Armenia and Iran; for the Ostrovets plant, recently built in the north of Belarus, ENSREG called for the implementation of the recommendations formulated with the stress tests before the start of the exercise.

Furthermore, a review of the 5th European Conference on nuclear safety was held last June, chaired by Stefano Laporta, during which crucial issues were discussed such as aging, decommissioning and the management of nuclear reactors, the standardization of the supply chain, component obsolescence and radioactive waste management.

The meeting also provided an opportunity to examine other important issues such as the coordination of the IRRS (Integrated Regulatory Review Service) and ARTEMIS (Integrated Review Service for Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management, Decommissioning and Remediation) missions carried out by the IAEA in the countries of the European Union and the ELSMOR project (European Lisencing of Small Modular Reactors), which aims to support European licenses for small modular reactors (SMRs).

Finally, the new guidelines entitled "Guidance on Openess and Transparency for European Nuclear Safety Regulators" have been approved, which should constitute, for the near future, a common reference in terms of communication by the competent EU regulatory Authorities.