Lentijo, who became President of the Spanish regulator in April 2022, previously served as Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Safety and Security at the IAEA for nine years

ENSREG plenary meets in Brussels to review the latest accomplishments of the working groups on nuclear safety, waste management, and communication and transparency

The Plenary of the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) has elected the Spanish Juan Carlos Lentijo to chair the group from January 2024. Lentijo, the current President of the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN, by its acronym in Spanish), will succeed Marta Žiaková, the head of the Slovak regulatory body, who has held the position since March 2019. The President attended the meeting with the Council's Nuclear Safety Technical Director, Teresa Vázquez.

ENSREG is a high-level advisory group created in 2007 at the request of the European Commission to raise recommendations to the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament on nuclear safety and radioactive waste management.

The CSN participates in its meetings as well as in ENSREG working groups dedicated to the areas of nuclear safety, international cooperation and communication, radioactive waste and spent fuel management and transparency alongside public Information. During the meeting, participants discussed the 2024-2026 ENSREG Work Programme. It will develop actions to implement the post-Fukushima measures from its National Action Plan, improve the execution of the IRRS/ARTEMIS missions, follow-up activities to support the implementation of the revised Nuclear Safety Directive, and the report on lessons learned from the first Topical Peer Review exercise (TPR-I) focused on the aging management of nuclear power plants.

Working group activities

Mikulas Turner, chairman of Working Group 1 on Nuclear Safety and International Cooperation,  who will pass the witness to Inga Pocztarek-Tofil from the Polish regulator, reviewed the updates of each country's National Action Plans and presented the organization of a new workshop on the IRRS (Integrated Regulatory Review Service) and the ARTEMIS (Integrated Review Service for Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management, Decommissioning and Remediation) missions at the EU to identify regulatory improvements and provide good practices to countries, as well as to improve the synergies between these two type of missions.

Working Group 2 on Waste Management and Decommissioning will also change its chair, this time it will be the Belgian Marc de Marche who will take on the lead, taking over from the Italian Stefano Laporta. In this group, the issues included in the work plan for the coming years were addressed, including the organization of a specific workshop on good practices and the lessons learned from waste management programs as the Waste Directive celebrates ten years of application.

João Oliveira Martins from the Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente (APA) reported on the latest progress of the group on Communication and Transparency with the Public and Stakeholders (WG3). Martins conveyed to the Plenary the progress in the development of the Terms of Reference (ToR) that will be applicable to the working group envisaged in the stakeholder engagement strategy for the second Topical Peer Review exercise (TPR-II), and the proposals for improving participation in this type of activities.

Other matters

Participants addressed topics such as the report on Stress Tests in third countries, nuclear safety in Ukraine, through updated information provided by the Ukrainian regulator (SNRIU), or the Commission's progress report on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and the related licensing workstream.

The latest developments on the second Topical Peer Review exercise (TPR-II), which focuses on fire protection in nuclear facilities, were also presented, as well as the review of facilities proposed by participating countries, including CSN. TPR-II follow-up activities have been included in the 2024–2026 work programme.

See the 53^rd ENSREG meeting Chair's Statement