Nuclear safety is a key priority for the European Union. Following the Fukushima accident in 2011, the EU has been a world leader in carrying out comprehensive risk and safety assessments (stress tests) of its nuclear power reactors.
In August 2015, the Armenian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (ANRA) submitted its National Report on Stress Tests for Armenian Nuclear Power Plant to the Directorate-General for Energy of the European Commission for peer review.
This Peer review exercise took place in Armenia from the 20th to the 24th June 2016. A team of 10 EU experts (8 from EU Member states which have been nominated by ENSREG members and 2 from the European Commission) were forming the peer review team. All the information related to this peer review exercise is available on the ENSREG Website:
Background
In 2011 the Republic of Armenia, Republic of Belarus, Republic of Croatia, Russian Federation, Swiss Confederation, Republic of Turkey, Ukraine, in cooperation with the EU, confirmed their willingness to undertake on a voluntary basis comprehensive risk and safety assessments (‘stress tests’), taking into account the specifications agreed by the European Commission and the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) on 24 May 2011.
At that time Armenia was not ready to take directly part to the EU Stress Tests process like Ukraine and Switzerland did but, with the support of two projects financed by the European Commission in the frame of the Instrument for Nuclear Safety Cooperation (INSC), the Medzamor Nuclear Power Plant and the Armenian Regulatory Authority (ANRA) started to prepare their “Stress Tests” reports with the intention to perform thereafter an independent Peer Review process to assess them.