ARMENIA AGREES TO JOIN NUCLEAR STRESS TEST PROGRAM TO EXAMINE ITS NUCLEAR POWER PLANT’S OPERATIONAL SAFETY

/ARKA/
JUNE 24, 2011
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, June 24, /ARKA/. Armenia, Croatia, Switzerland, Turkey,
Belarus, Russia and Ukraine have agreed to join their nuclear
stress test programs to examine whether their atomic power plants
can withstand accidents and disasters, the European Union said in a
statement June 23, RIA Novosti news agency said.

The statement said the 27 EU nations agreed on such a program last
month and had called on other countries to join the plan. The June 23
announcement was a first big breakthrough to expand the program. Under
the tests, “experts from other countries will evaluate the assessment
carried out by their national experts,” the EU said in the statement.

“This is a huge joint step forward, for us, and for the neighbors on
the European continent,” EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger
said.

Russia also applauded the move and wanted more countries to join. “We
urge them to conduct the tests and … exchange results,” Sergey
Kirienko, the head of Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom said in a
statement.

The EU test should last through much of the rest of the year and
the final results will be announced publicly by April. The idea of
performing “stress tests” on nuclear plants arose because of the
accidents at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan following the
earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

European nuclear plants are being regularly checked as it is, but
under the system, the checks will be toughened up and coordinated
across the EU and face peer review by multinational teams of experts,
who could decide at short notice on checks on location. The EU
itself has 143 nuclear reactors. Russia has 32, and another 11 under
construction. Ukraine, site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster,
has 15 with two under construction.

The European Commission launched the process of examining the
operational safety of European nuclear power plants On June 1. EU
officials have repeatedly noted that in the event of an accident at
a nuclear power plant the radiation will not stop at the borders of
the country where the station is, therefore, it urged its neighbors
to carry out security checks, similar to tests in the EU.

Russian nuclear power plant will conduct additional safety testing
in accordance with new European stress test standards immediately
after their approval by the international community, Nikolai Sorokin,
vice-president of Nuclear Society of Russia and Director of the Kursk
nuclear power plant, told RIA Novosti news agency on June 3.

EU countries have agreed to conduct stress test to check their nuclear
power plants for resistance to natural disasters, as well as to various
man-made disasters such as plane crashes, but have not yet agreed on
the possibility of assessing their resistance to terrorist attacks.

The European Commission announced May 25 that the tests will begin
on June 1 and the final conclusions will arrive in mid-2012. The
nuclear power plants will be checked by plant operators, then by
independent national bodies responsible for nuclear safety, after
which the test results will be evaluated by independent observers,
and then the European Commission will form its own opinion and submit
it to the consideration of heads of EU states Inspections should also
determine whether there is enough back-up equipment at the stations in
case of power failure. In Japan the reactor’s cooling was interrupted
because of power outages after the disaster leading to the explosions
and radiation leaks.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress