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2.3 European Nuclear Safety
Regulators Group (ENSREG)
ASNplays an active part in the work of ENSREG, which
supports the EuropeanCommission’s European legislation
initiatives. Four working groups were created, devoted
to the safety of installations, to the safe management
of radioactive waste and of spent fuel, to transparency
in the nuclear sector and to international cooperation
(outside the European Union).
On 26th April 2012, one year after the Fukushima
Daiichi accident, a joint statement by ENSREG and the
European Commissionmarked the end of the stress tests
conducted on the EuropeanNuclear Power Plants (NPP).
This statement emphasised the need to implement an
overall action plan to make sure that these stress tests
are followed by improvements to safetymeasures, at the
national level, and that thesemeasures are implemented
in a consistent manner.
This ENSREGoverall actionplanmore specifically required
that the nuclear safety regulator of eachmember country
publish a national action plan by the end of 2012, with
each of them being assessed during a seminar bringing
together the safety regulators concerned. This seminar
took place in April 2013. A further exercise to follow
up the recommendations of the stress tests was carried
out in 2015.
The safety regulatorswere thus urged to update their action
plans by the end of 2014 in preparation for a European
peer review, which ended with a seminar organised by
ENSREG in the spring of 2015.
ENSREGalso organised the third edition of theConference
on Nuclear Safety in Europe in Brussels, on 29th and
30th June 2015. This conference reviewed the current
state of safety in Europe.
2.4 The European Directive
on the Safety of nuclear installations
TheCouncil 2009/71/EuratomDirective of 25th June 2009
aims to establish aCommunity framework to ensure nuclear
safety within the European Atomic Energy Community
and to encourage theMember States to guarantee a high
level of nuclear safety.
The European Union has thus remedied the absence of
European nuclear safety legislation. This has the advantage
ofmaking its provisions binding through their transposition
into the legislation of the 28 Member States.
On 22nd July 2011, France complied with its directive
transposition obligations.
As requiredby the 2009Directive, France sent the European
Commission a first national report on the implementation
of the directive in late July 2014. The preparation of
this national report was entrusted to ASN. In addition
to ASN, this involved the main French administrations
concerned, as well as the licensees of the nuclear facilities
targeted by the Directive (in particular NPP reactors, fuel
cycle facilities and research reactors).
Under the mandate given by the heads of State and
Governments in March 2011, asking the European
Commission to look at the necessary changes to the
European safety legal framework following the Fukushima
Daiichi accident, it stated that it intended to propose a
revision of the 2009 directive and to involve ENSREG
in this process in early 2013.
During the negotiations inBrussels, ASN issued an opinion
expressing its satisfaction with the clear progress with
respect to the existing Directive of 25th June 2009.
ASN stressed the following points:
•
strengthening the provisions concerning transparency
and involvement of the public;
•
definition of safety objectives for nuclear facilities,
covering all steps in their operation and taking account
of the conclusions of the last meeting of the contracting
parties to the Nuclear Safety Convention;
•
obligation to conduct ten-yearly periodic safety reviews
of the facilities, which is one of the recommendations
to come out of the European stress tests conducted
following the Fukushima Daiichi accident.
ASNhowever underlined the fact that the newEuropean
nuclear safety framework, which the European Council
and Parliament wanted to see implemented, could only
be truly successful in the long run if this framework:
•
avoids creating any ambiguity concerning responsibility
for the oversight of nuclear safety;
•
further reinforces the institutional independence of
the safety regulators, over and above the functional
separation, with these regulatorsmore specifically being
legally independent from the authorities in charge of
energy policy;
•
were tomake provision for a joint mechanism in Europe
for reviewing safety problems, under the responsibility
of the safety regulators, with peer reviewandmonitoring
and with the results being made public;
•
were to ensure the consistency of the measures taken
by the Member States for managing a radiological
emergency situation in Europe.
The revised European Union Directive was adopted on
8th July 2014 and took account of the vast majority of
the text improvements pointed out by ASN. It makes
provision for increased powers and independence of
the national safety regulators, sets an ambitious safety
objective for the entire Union (based on the baseline
safety requirements used by WENRA) and establishes
a European system of peer reviews on safety topics (fire
risk and flooding for example). It also establishes national
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CHAPTER 07:
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2015