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NIA welcomes 'Stress Test' report publication |
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Wednesday, 04 January 2012 |
The NIA has welcomed today’s announcement by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) revealing that no fundamental weaknesses have been found during safety reassessments undertaken at UK nuclear power stations following events at Fukushima Dai-ichi.
The UK national ‘stress test’ report to the EU was published today by the ONR and confirms that UK sites have identified and made improvements to enhance safety by learning from events in Japan.
The Licensees of the 33 operating or shutdown reactors in the UK completed the stress tests to specifications set out by the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group and the ONR has reviewed their results. The full report is available online at www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear.
John Donald, a senior nuclear safety inspector at the Office for Nuclear Regulation, said:
“To date, no fundamental weaknesses in design and resilience have been identified at UK nuclear power plants, and lessons are being learnt from Fukushima to enhance safety, in line with our regulatory philosophy of continuous improvement.
“Fukushima provided the world a unique opportunity to learn from a serious nuclear accident. No matter how high our standards of safety, the quest for improvement must never stop. Work is already under way to improve safety at UK sites, such as bolstering flood defences and enhancing coolant supplies. We have also asked licensees of UK nuclear power stations to consider resilience against events that have only remote chances of happening in the UK.
“In line with the specifications of the stress tests, we now look forward to the UK’s report being peer reviewed by colleagues from other European regulators. This may also identify further improvements that could be made.”
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