By joining the Joint Declaration on comprehensive risk and safety assessments of nuclear plants (stress tests) in June 2011 (1), Belarus confirmed its willingness to undertake on a voluntary basis such assessments, taking into account the specifications agreed by the European Commission and the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) on 24 May 2011.
In preparation of this process, the Commission started long time in advance detailed discussion with the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) in order to ensure that adequate resources would be available in due time to perform this peer review process. This peer review exercise was already included two years ago in the ENSREG Work programme for 2016-2019 (2).
In preparation of the peer review, ENSREG has established, in the summer of 2017, a Board and a peer review team to review the Belarusian national stress test report with the support of 17 nuclear safety regulators from nuclear and non-nuclear power EU Member States and the Commission (3).
This cooperation is currently under way and Belarus has presented the 31 October 2017 to the EU its national stress tests report on the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant for a peer review led by an international team of EU regulators.
The EU Stress Test peer review process currently ongoing in Belarus does not deviate from past stress test exercises, follows the same technical specifications prepared by ENSREG in May 2011 (4) and is performed in full transparency according to the ‘principle for openness and transparency’ as adopted by ENSREG in December 2011 (5).
To ensure a smooth implementation of the process, all practical details of the Peer Review have been compiled in a single document which has been approved by the Belarus Stress Board and by Belarus Counterpart (6).
According to the principle of transparency, the Belarus national stress test report, the core element of the ongoing peer review, has been published on this website (7, also attached below) and was open for public consultation from Monday 13 November 2017 to Saturday 13 January 2018. The report is also available in the Russian version on the website of the Belarus nuclear regulatory authority (8). The answers to the questions received during the public consultation are also published below.
The Peer review exercise took place in Belarus from the 12th to the 16th March 2018. A team of 17 experts from EU and non EU Member States with a good balance between nuclear power and non-nuclear countries were forming the peer review team. The team included also 2 representatives from the Commission and 3 observers (1 from the IAEA, 1 from the Russian Federation and 1 from Iran). The answers to the PRT questions are published below.
The Peer Review Board came to Belarus from the 12th to the 14th June 2018 to present the final version of the Peer Review report to Gosatomnadzor and Belarus NPP representatives.
This report has been endorsed by European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) and the results of this Stress Test peer review in Belarus were presented to the public on 3 July 2018 in the Albert Borschette Congress Centre (CCAB) in Brussels.
A joint press release was issued after this public presentation and the Peer Review Report together with an executive summary were published on 4 July 2018 on this web page (see the attachments below).
(1) https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/20110623_stress_test_joint_declaration_eu_neighbouring_countries.pdf
(2) http://www.ensreg.eu/document/ensreg-work-programme-2016-2019
(3) http://www.ensreg.eu/news/minutes-34th-meeting-ensreg
(4) http://www.ensreg.eu/node/289/
(5) http://www.ensreg.eu/node/349/
(6) http://www.ensreg.eu/document/belarus-stress-tests-practical-arrangements
(7) http://www.ensreg.eu/document/belarus-stress-test-final-report
(8) http://www.gosatomnadzor.gov.by/phocadownload/dokladi_i_obzori/National%20report%20on%20Belarusian%20NPP%20stress-tests.pdf
