Nuclear fuel transport safety regulations should be harmonized, says ESA

摘要

The Euratom Supply Agency called earlier this month for harmonization of national regulations governing nuclear fuel transportation within the EU and warned against over-regulation of uranium conversion facilities, in order to reduce risks of fuel supply disruptions. ESA is in charge of nuclear fuel supply in the European Union. Its annual report, released May 4, was produced by Euratom’s Advisory Committee Working Group on Prices and Security of Supply. The working group is comprised of European nuclear fuel specialists from utilities and fuel suppliers. ESA said in its report that the “lack of harmonisation of regulation in [fuel] transport regulation” and the fact that regulation has increasingly prevented the shipment of nuclear fuel to some European ports,an imbalance in supply and demand in terms of volumes, but also to less diverse [fuel] supply sources,” ESA said. The report did not identify specific examples or cite any ports where it said shipments had been prevented, but it did rank the risks on a rising scale from 1 to 12. The report identified the threat to fuel supply posed by lack of harmonization in transport regulations as having a risk of 6.20.