UCL ENERGY INSTITUTE

Pan-European Nuclear Energy Safety
Systems
Dr Paul Dorfman
Feb 2021

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Euratom Treaty 1957
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/• Co-ordinates EU Member States (MS)‘harmonised development’ of nuclear safety andradiation protection systems.
• Non-binding recommendations and decisions toestablish European nuclear safety standards.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Directive on the Management of Spent Fueland Radioactive Waste: (Directive2011/70/Euratom) http://www.ensreg.eu/nuclearsafety-regulation/eu-instruments/Spent-fuel-andradioactive-waste-directive• Legally binding and instituted a pan-EU framework
on a key issue.
• Covers radioactive waste and spent fuelmanagement, from production through to ‘longterm disposal’…

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE• Rad-waste the responsibility of Producers andeach Member State to ‘guarantee a high level ofsafety and to protect workers and the generalpublic against the dangers of ionising radiation’.
• Member States (MS) must create a legal
framework and independent regulatory authority.
• Transparency and the participation of the public.
• Ensure financial resources.
• Regular self-assessment and peer review.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE(Amended) Nuclear Safety Directive:(2014/87/Euratom)
http://www.ensreg.eu/news/amended-nuclear-safetydirective• Safety assessments to be carried out before
construction of new nuclear power plant.
• Safety enhancements for old reactors.
• Strengthen the role of national regulatory
authorities to ensure their independence: MS must
provide their regulators with sufficient legal power,
staff, and finance.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE• Requires a safety re-evaluation for all nuclear
power plants to be conducted at least once every
10 years.
• Operators must release information to the public,
during normal operation and during incidents.
• Peer review system: EU countries choose acommon nuclear safety topic every six years andorganise a national safety assessment on it.
Submit their assessments to other countries forreview. Findings of these peer reviews are madepublic.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Basic Safety Standards Directive 2014
http://www.ensreg.eu/nuclear-safety-regulation/euinstruments/Basic-Safety-Standards-Directive• Sets out radiation protection standards for EU
Member States.
• Sets limits on the maximum radiation dose thatanyone should receive under ‘normal conditions’.
• Nuclear facilities and radioactive waste sites must
keep radiation doses received by the public andits workers ‘As Low As Reasonably Achievable’.
(ALARA).

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Basic Safety Standards Directive
supplemented by five specific Directives on:• Medical Exposures, Public Information, Outside
Workers, Shipments of radioactive waste andspent fuel, Control of high-activity sealed
radioactive sources and orphan sources, Drinkingwater.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

European System: Directive Transposition• Member States (MS) struggling in transposing
Directives to National Legal Regulations.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

IAEA Safety Standards
https://www.iaea.org/about/partnerships/european-union• European Union (EU), and European Commission(EC) co-operate on policy and financing fornuclear safety and technical issues:• Radiation protection, radioactive waste
management, environmental remediation,decommissioning, nuclear safety culture,
emergency preparedness and response.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

IAEA / EC Treaties• Convention on Nuclear Safety.
• Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear
Material (CPPNM) and its Amendment.
• Conventions on civil liability for nuclear damage.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTEWENRA (Western European Nuclear
Regulators Association), 1999.
http://www.wenra.org

Initial Objectives:• Establish safety levels.
• Develop a common approach to EU nuclear safetyregulation.
• Working groups: Nuclear power reactors;
Management of spent fuels and radioactive waste
and on decommissioning operations; Inspection.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE• WENRA safety levels: not legally binding but havesignificant normative power – especially regards
peer review.
• WENRA Members: Normally the same people.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

ENSREG (European Safety REgulators
Group)
http://www.ensreg.eu• European Commission (EC) created the EuropeanHigh Level Group (HLG) on Nuclear Safety andWaste Management, which changed its name toENSREG.
• No written definition on roles and processes.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE• Group of experts from Member States
represented by national delegates.
• Split evenly between heads of safety regulatorsand representatives of Ministries for theEnvironment or Energy (i.e. two representatives
per delegation).
• More formal than WENRA.
• ENSREG an advisory body to the EC.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE'Stress Tests’: Pan-Europe Post-Fukushima
Reassessment of Nuclear Plant SafetyMargins• ENSREG coordinated ‘Stress Tests’ on the basisof technical provisions established by WENRA.
• However, Stress Tests of EU's 143 nuclear powerreactors did not include risk of accident andincident from a large aeroplane strike or terrorist
attack…

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

ENSREG/WENRA: Iterative reflection process
between the two organisations.
• WENRA: More of a ‘club’ with TOR’s – no statute,unregistered.
• The strength of WENRA is that organizations arecommitted to it.
• WENRA is more ‘technical’ - ENSREG is more‘political’.
• E.g. ‘Stress Tests’: Series of WENRA technicalreviews, then adopted by ENSREG.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

European Nuclear Energy Forum (ENEF):
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/topics/nuclearenergy/nuclear-safety/european-nuclear-energy-forumenef_en• ‘A platform for a broad discussion, ontransparency issues as well as the opportunities
and risks of nuclear energy. EU MS Govts,
European Parliament, European Economic andSocial Committee, nuclear industry, electricity
consumers and the civil society.’• However … many see ENEF as a ‘talking shop’pushing for new nuclear in Eastern Europe.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Scientific Radiation Risk Assessment• Interaction of ionising radiation and the living
environment (to determine differing pathways to,
uptake of, and metabolism by, differing organisms,plants, soils, plants, water courses).
• Radiation Epidemiological (direct effect).
• Radiation Biology (mechanistic).

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Current Institutional Radiation RiskRegulatory Assessment• Linear no-threshold (LNT) model assumes thatradiation doses greater than zero willproportionally increase the risk of excess cancer
or heritable disease – i.e. no safe threshold.
• Paradox: Although ‘no safe threshold’, current
radiation protection practices, disposals anddispersals do not present a ‘significant risk’…

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Causation

Complete identification of source-pathway-receptor:• Concentration of quantity and quality ofradioactive pollutant.
• Pathways through environment.
• Uptake and metabolism to receptor (humanbeings and other organisms).

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE• Radio-isotopic species.
• Levels of radiation emissions (both authorised andaccidental releases).
• Affected communities (including differing radiationsusceptibility of critical/age groups).
• Complex environmental pathways (air, water, soil)• Receptor uptake and metabolism (translocation,residency and excretion rates).
• Radiation health effects (aetiology of cancer,leukaemia, and other diseases including heart andimmune-related).

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Differing Quantities and Qualities of Ionising
Radiation• High or low linear energy transfer (LET).
• Single or continuous, periodic or episodic
exposure.
• Anthropogenic (man-made), or natural
background radiation (NBR).

UCLUCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE• Delivered to differing receiving ecosystems:
population, community, organism, molecular, andcellular levels.
• Providing experimental data concerning both
deterministic and somatic (stochastic) effects.
• Translated into radiation protection models via
national, regional and international scientificadvisory organisations: e.g. ICRP, UNSCEAR,IAEA, NRA, WENRA ENSREG, CERRIE etc.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Scientific advisory bodies interpret radiation
risk data which then translated as national
regulatory standard regimes for:• Nuclear plant operation.
• Environmental emissions from nuclear plant (e.g.
general derived limits, consents andauthorisations to discharge).

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Fundamental Rad-Risk Knowledge Time-Lag• Scientific committees not usually the mostprogressive.
• Even if organizations believe in need for change inlevels, it takes decades to translate intoregulations.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

EU Taxonomy• EU is currently deciding whether, or not, nuclear is'sustainable'.
• EC reviewed rules for sustainable finance - EU
Taxonomy - to identify economic activities that canbe considered economically and environmentallysustainable.
• e.g. NGO Communique to EC:
https://www.nuclearconsult.com/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2020/04/communique-eu-tegnuclear2april2020.pdf

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE• EU Taxonomy Technical Expert Group (TEG)
delivered their final recommendations to theCommission; excluding nuclear from theSustainable Finance Taxonomy 'at this stage',stating that 'it was not possible to conclude thenuclear energy value chain does not causesignificant harm to other environmental objectives
on the time scales in question’.
• Push-back from some Member States, especially
France and nuclear industry. So, EC requested its
Joint Research Centre (JRC) to draft a technicalreport on the ‘do no significant harm’ aspects ofnuclear energy.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE• In the next few weeks, EC Joint Research Council(JRC) - a subset if the EC Technical Working
Group (TEG) - will publish their review.
• JRC assessment to be handed over to EC
Department for Financial Stability and CapitalMarkets (DG FISMA).
• JRC report will be reviewed by two additional
expert groups: Radiation protection and waste
management (under Article 31 of the EuratomTreaty); and the Scientific Committee on Health,Environmental and Emerging Risks.

UCL
UCL ENERGYENERGY INSTITUTEINSTITUTE

Austrian Govt Input• Austria has drafted a scientific review of the issue
which they have just published – I can send
through the English version on request.
• https://www.bmk.gv.at/themen/klima_umwelt/nukl
earpolitik/aikk/warum.html

Thank YouDr Paul Dorfman

www.ucl.ac.uk/energy