EU to seek common safety rules for nuclear plants
Date: 13-Sep-02
Country: BELGIUM
Author: Yves Clarisse
Atomic energy provides 33 percent of EU electricity and 14 percent of all energy consumption in the 15-nation bloc, but policy is largely in the hands of individual member states.
"We regulate the quality of bathing water in the European Union but there is nothing on the safety of nuclear power plants. We have to say that, whether you like it or not, nuclear power is unavoidable," EU Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio told reporters.
She said she would put forward draft directives in the coming weeks to make International Atomic Energy Agency safety standards legally binding in the EU, allow cross-border "peer review" of nuclear plants and set a deadline for building storage sites for radioactive waste.
De Palacio also said the EU would open talks with Russia on nuclear fuel supplies to candidate countries in eastern Europe which are entirely dependent on Moscow for fissile material to run Soviet-designed power stations.
The proposals appeared aimed primarily at dispelling fears in western Europe about safety at those plants once those countries join the EU.
CROSS-BORDER INSPECTIONS
De Palacio said she did not plan a corps of EU inspectors, but experts from one member state should be able to carry out inspections in another EU country.
"We will establish compulsory European standards as was demanded of the candidate countries. Once the candidates are in, we will either have to stop checks on them, or we will have to check everywhere," the commissioner said.
Because of fierce resistance by environmental campaigners, most EU states lack long-term storage facilities for spent fuel and store nuclear waste at power plants or temporary sites.
De Palacio said funds established in member states to pay for the dismantling of ageing nuclear plants were inadequate.
She would demand that such funds be "sufficient and available" in all member states.
The commissioner said the EU had no hope of reducing its output of greenhouse gases under the Kyoto treaty to combat global warming without nuclear power.
The EU has a rule that no member state may depend on a single supplier for more than 20 percent of its nuclear fuel, but the candidates cannot meet that target because Russia is the only country that produces the fuel used in their stations.
"So we have to negotiate with the Russians," de Palacio said. Moscow earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year by supplying fissile material to run 18 or the 19 nuclear plants in former communist east European countries.