If countries that used nuclear as a power source regularly used national and international peer reviews of nuclear installations as reference, the safety of power plants around the world would be improved and their ecological impact reduced, head of international projects at research firm the Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit, Dr Hartmuth Teske, said in St Petersburg this week.

He told delegates at the International Atomic Energy Agency International Ministerial Conference that regulatory and expert groups could assist by offering their expertise to identify relevant safety topics and carrying out peer reviews.

“Appropriate follow-up mechanisms with a kind of ‘peer pressure’ could be established to ensure implementation of industry best practices,” Teske stated.

He, however, pointed out that despite Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power, following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, in Japan, the country respected other countries’ choice to use it as a power source, provided  safety was prioritised.

“A nuclear accident anywhere is an incident everywhere. No national border protects us. We need to pay more attention to cooperation with our neighbours worldwide,” Teske urged.

He pointed out that established global, regional and thematic networks served as a good platform and should be used to enable cooperation on all levels more intensively.

“To assist in achieving this, truthful and proven information exchange on domestic, regional and global levels, and at each step in the decision-making process, as well as in the implementation phases, is important,” he said.

Teske highlighted that Germany believed that all countries using nuclear power had to seek to further reduce the environmental and health impact of the electricity source.

“It has to be ensured that the nuclear installations are designed, sited, constructed, commissioned, operated and decommissioned with the objective of avoiding or significantly reducing potential radioactive releases.

“This could be achieved by practically eliminating the occurrence of all accident sequences that would lead to early or large releases…for accidents that have not been practically eliminated, design measures have to be implemented so that only limited protective measures are needed,” he put forward.

Meanwhile, Teske added that independent verification and review of the safety case of a nuclear power plant by industry bodies was crucial to ensuring the safety of plants worldwide.

“Well-known lessons learned from accidents decades ago have not been taken up voluntarily by parts of the industry and not been sufficiently enforced by regulators.

“The licence holders should work to regularly assess and continuously improve the safety and environmental protection of their installations…the regulatory authority should supervise these activities,” he urged.