The president of the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN), Juan Carlos Lentijo, and the technical director for Nuclear Safety, Teresa Vázquez, have participated in Brussels in the fifty-first Plenary meeting of the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) in which the members have been working on the design of the work programme for the period 2024-2026.

The members of the organisation have discussed topics such as the report of the ENSREG board for stress tests in third countries, nuclear safety in Ukraine with the latest updated information from the Ukrainian regulator (SNRIU) or the progress report of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) pre-Partnership Steering Committee and particularly the work of the SMR Licensing Work-Stream. In addition, various reports were presented: the workshop on the implementation of the Nuclear Safety Directive, the activities of the European Technical Safety Organisations Network (ETSON) and a technical one on stress corrosion cracking in France (SCC).

In addition, the chairperson of ENSREG, Marta Ziaková, introduced the new vice chairman of the group, João Oliveira Martins, from the Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente, who will also chair the Working Group on Transparency (WG3).

Working group activities

Mikulas Turner, chairman of Working Group 1 on Nuclear Safety and international cooperation, highlighted the monitoring of the implementation the National Action Plans (NAcPs) arising fron the Stress Tests, and confirmed that a final report is being developed in which it will be summarised the status and completion of all actions. This activity will be included in the ENSREG 2024–2026 work programme. In addition, a review of the updates of the National Action Plans of each country has been carried out and the group is considering to organise the a workshop on the European program of the EU-IRRS missions (Integrated Regulatory Review Service) and ARTEMIS (Integrated Review Service for Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management, Decommissioning and Remediation) in 2023 with the aim of identifying improvements in regulations and providing good practices to countries, as well as to improve synergies between these two missions.

With regard to Working Group 2 on Waste Management and Decommissioning, in the presentation made by its leader, Stefano Laporta, it was highlighted the results of a survey related to national decommissioning strategies which was answered by 21 member states in addition to United Kingdom.

In Working Group 3 on Transparency (WG3), its chairperson, Patrick Majerus, has commented the main milestone of the group, the approval of the ENSREG communication strategy, which clearly establishes the organisation's commitment to open communication and how transparency is implemented through communication with the public and stakeholders. In addition, the concept of creating a Thematic Peer Review (TPR) focus group for discussion and comments has been explained.

Second Topical Peer Review (TPR-II)

Sylvie Cadet-Mercier, chair of the TPR-II Board, has presented the progress report of the second topical peer review exercise focusing on 'Fire protection and fire prevention at nuclear installations' as well as the review of the facility proposed by the participating countries to be visited in this exercise.

Likewise, Working Group 1 on Nuclear Safety has confirmed that the guide for visits will be drawn up later by the Board and discussed by the group to be later presented to ENSREG. TPR-II follow-up activities will be included in the 2024–2026 work programme.

ENSREG work program 2024-2026

On the other hand, all the participants have been able to comment on the preparation of the ENSREG Work Programme for the period 2024-2026 and it has been confirmed that a first draft will be discussed in the spring of 2023. In this new program, the update of the summary report on the implementation of the post-Fukushima actions arising from the national action plan stands out, the improvement of the the IRRS/ARTEMIS missions, the follow-up activities to support the implementation of the revised Nuclear Safety Directive and the report on the lessons learned from TPR-II. This work programme is expected to be approved in the fall of 2023.

Equally, the representatives of the nuclear regulatory authorities have asked to discuss other issues of interest to the association such as the studies underway and planned by the European Commission, the WENRA report on the permanent technical group "accident scenarios in the war in Ukraine ” or the letter from the European Environmental Bureau jointly with Nuclear Transparency Watch to start a European process of nuclear security stress tests after the Ukrainian conflict in all European nuclear power plants.

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 Nuclear Waste Management. The CSN participates in its meetings as well as in ENSREG working groups dedicated to the areas of Nuclear Safety, Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management, International Cooperation and Communication and Transparency of the regulatory body.

 

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