nuclear-news

The thin ice under nuclear regulatory independence Greenpeace, by Jan Haverkamp – December 19, 2013  In this space I have written before about the importance of nuclear regulatory agencies being fully independent. Fukushima showed that a lack of independence leads to complacency and that complacency adds to the complexity of nuclear accidents when they happen.

In 2009, the Euratom Treaty adopted a rule on regulatory independence: Section 5(2) of the Nuclear Safety Directive (2009/71/Euratom) says: “Member States shall ensure that the competent regulatory authority is functionally separate from any other body or organisation concerned with the promotion, or utilisation of nuclear energy, including electricity production, in order to ensure effective independence from undue influence in its regulatory decision making.” The nearest you can get to violating this rule is by promoting nuclear yourself.

Yet promoting nuclear seems to be what the president of the Polish Nuclear Energy Agency (PAA) Janusz Włodarski is doing. Currently, he faces a push from Polish politicians and the nuclear lobby to introduce nuclear power in what is now a nuclear-free country. Quotes attributed to Mr. Włodarski in the Japanese magazine “Rising” are more than sufficient reason for concern: “Nuclear energy is clean energy, environmentally friendly. Even if something like the Fukushima disaster were to happen [again], Poland wants to implement nuclear power.”….

Mr. Włodarski has used the arguments that Polish politicians use to try to massage the opinion of the majority of Poles who know that nuclear energy is not clean and not environmentally friendly, and that Fukushima is an ongoing catastrophe……

What we need at PAA is someone who can prevent the Polish nuclear industry from getting away with a nuclear power station that is built on propaganda rather than hard fact. Because such a nuclear power station could well become the next Fukushima.http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/weak-nuclear-regulatory-independence/blog/47755/