WENRA

The Western European Nuclear Regulator’s Association /WENRA/ is created in 1999 as a non-governmental organisation comprised of the Heads and senior staff members of Nuclear Regulatory Authorities of European countries with nuclear power plants. According to the WENRA Terms Of Reference of 2010, with the general aim of improving nuclear safety, the Association has the following objectives:
- to build and maintain a network of chief nuclear safety regulators in Europe;
- to promote exchange of experience and learning from each others best practices;
- to develop a harmonized approach to nuclear safety and regulation, in particular within the European Union;
- to discuss and, where appropriate, express its opinion on, significant safety and regulatory issues.

For more information on WENRA policy and activities, please consult the WENRA web site: www.wenra.org

The Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (BNRA) is a WENRA member since March 2003 and is participating in the harmonisation activities.

Harmonisation of safety approaches

WENRA launched two working groups to harmonise safety approaches between countries in Europe, one on reactor safety (Reactor Harmonisation Working Group) and one on decommissioning and nuclear waste safety (Working Group on Waste and Decommissioning). The aim was to continuously improve safety and to reduce unnecessary differences between the countries, even it was recognised that no specific indication was identified that the safety level reached with the most recent national requirements in WENRA countries was insufficient.

The mandate of the working groups was to analyse the current situation and the different safety approaches, compare individual national regulatory approaches with the IAEA Safety Standards, identify any differences and propose a way forward to possibly eliminate the differences without impairing the final resulting level of safety. The proposals should be based on the best practices among the most advanced requirements for existing power reactors and nuclear waste facilities.

The working groups have now finalized their work on common reference levels with the objective to attain a common approach to nuclear safety within Europe. WENRA has decided to publish the common reference levels in the following reports and have invited the Stakeholders to make comments on the published reference levels:
Harmonisation of Reactor Safety in WENRA Countries (1.05MB)
Decommissioning Safety, Reference Levels Report (320KB)
Waste and Spent Fuel Storage Safety, References Levels Report (325KB)
WENRA Reactor Safety Reference Levels (recent version from January 2008) (277KB)

Moreover, a benchmarking has been performed for nuclear reactors, where the countries have assessed their regulations and guides and implementation in the NPPs against the reference levels. This process is reflected in the Report on Harmonisation of Reactor Safety in WENRA Countries. The detailed results are intended to help the development of national action plans and consider wider implications of the study.

Action Plan for Harmonisation of Reactor Safety (69.3 KB)

Such process is currently ongoing for the decommissioning and nuclear waste safety.

In addition to the published by WENRA Reports, the BNRA has decided to make public available a short overview of the national results from the panel benchmarking of the reactor harmonisation reference levels with respect to the legal requirements and implementation status.

Summary of the Bulgarian National Results (41.3KB)

According to a mandate given by WENRA members in March 2008, the Reactor Harmonization Working Group (RHWG) has performed a pilot study on the safety of new reactors.

The study addresses projects that are under way or planned in the short term, meaning that innovative designs such as Generation 4 concepts are not considered. As part of this study, high-level qualitative safety objectives are proposed for new reactors, on the basis of the IAEA Fundamental Safety Principles and of a review of the existing documentation. The study also includes a limited test of possible further developments such as the identification of areas of safety improvement in meeting the proposed safety objectives, and an analysis of the applicability to new reactors of the reference levels developed by WENRA for existing ones.

The results of the study are published in a Report on Safety Objectives of New Reactors (268 KB)