The Enlargement of the European Union will, over the next decades, lead to a twenty six country Union, with a population of around half a billion citizens. This highly complex process will impact upon all sectors of the aspiring countries’ societies. An area that will need to be addressed and one that has been identified as a priority is that of nuclear safety. Agenda 2000 stresses this point and calls for the issue to be urgently and efficiently addressed. However, unlike other areas nuclear safety does not fall under the Community Acquis, as nuclear safety standards are the competence of the national government and their appropriate authorities. Despite this, Agenda 2000 calls for an increase in nuclear safety to a standard dependent on the original reactor design. These reactor categories are: -

The first generation of reactors: the VVER 440-230 and RBMK designs. Agenda 2000 states that these cannot be economically upgraded to an acceptable safety standard and thus need to be closed. The reactors in question are already the subject of agreements that lay out closure dates and conditions. Agenda 2000 calls for these agreements to be abided by. The reactors in question are: Bohunice V-1 in Slovakia; Ignalina 1 and 2 in Lithuania; and Kozloduy 1-4 in Bulgaria.

The second generation of reactors: the VVER 440-213 and VVER 1000 designs. Agenda 2000 states that the reactors of these design which are in operation or under-construction can be economically upgraded to meet international safety standards. The Commission states that an upgrading program should be fully implemented over the next ten years. This applies to, Dukovany and Temelin in the Czech Republic; Bohunice V-2 and Mochovce in Slovakia; Paks in Hungary; and Kozloduy 5 and 6 in Bulgaria.

The final category put forward is for the Western design reactors in operation and under-construction in accession countries (Krsko in Slovenia and Cernavoda in Romania). In these cases monitoring and assessments need to be undertaken to ensure that the operation is in line with the appropriate safety standards.

A report prepared by the Western European Nuclear Regulators Association (WENRA) in 1999 largely agreed with the Commission categorisation. Of the ten CEE countries applying for accession, seven have nuclear reactors currently in operation.

Bulgaria has one nuclear power plant at Kozloduy, which has four VVER 440-230 reactors and two VVER 1000 reactors in operation. The power station contributes about 40% to the country’s electricity. An agreement signed in 1993 with the Nuclear Safety Account (NSA) sought the closure of the first four units by mid 1998. However, the closure dates proposed were dependent on the implementation of alternative energy projects, often referred to as trigger projects. These have not fully been implemented yet and therefore although the proposed closure dates have passed, the NSA agreement has not been technically broken. In fact one key trigger project, the upgrading of units 5 and 6, had not even begun by the middle of 1999.

The Czech Republic has two nuclear power plants. At Dukovany there are four operating VVER 440-213 reactors and at Temelin two VVER 1000 reactors are under construction. The Dukovany reactors are the subject of an extensive retrofitting program, which is expected to be completed by 2005, costing around €750 million. This program is being undertaken in order to fulfil the yet to be defined safety criteria of enlargement and to increase the operational life of the reactors from thirty to forty years. The Temelin reactors were the first VVER 1000 reactors to have significant western involvement in their proposed completion. In 1992 Westinghouse was awarded the contract to supply their instrument and control technology. At that time it was expected that unit 1 would be operational by 1995. However, the project has been plagued with technical problems, especially the addition of western technology to a Russian designed plant at such a late stage of construction, and the reactors are still not operational today. The revised start-up date for unit 1 is now 2001. In 1999 the Government narrowly decided to continue construction at Temelin despite protests from the Czech President Vaclav Havel, the European Parliament and neighbouring Austria.

Hungary has four VVER 440-213 reactors operating at Paks. These reactors are being subjected to a €250 million upgrading program, which in addition to proposing to increase the safety is also expected to increase the power production by 10-15%. Although the operators of Paks have not yet applied yet, it is anticipated that the upgrading program will also allow the reactors lives to be extended by a further ten years. In 1999 a bid by Paks to build additional reactors, supplied by Westinghouse or Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) was rejected.

Lithuania has two RMBK 1500 reactors currently operational at Ignalina, which generate 80% of the total electricity produced annually. In 1994 the Lithuanian Government signed an agreement with the NSA which limited the life of the reactors, by disallowing the re-channelling of the reactors. After about ten to fifteen years operation the fuel channels of RMBK reactors have to be replaced. The exact date when re-channelling will be needed is not known, but many believe it will be 2002 if not sooner. The Ignalina reactors, which were built in the 1980s, were designed to supply electricity to the region and have always done so and continue to today. Proposals exist to construct an export link from Lithuania to Poland to allow the sale of electricity from Lithuania to the Western European Grid. This would significantly increase the potential revenue of the power station.

Romania has Europe’s only operating CANDU reactor, which was design and project managed by AECL of Canada. The reactor’s construction was begun in 1980 and was finally completed in 1996. Originally it was intended that four reactors would be built on site, but today plans exist for only the construction of a second unit. During the pre-accession process little attention has been given to the Cernavoda reactor as it is of Western design, but concerns have been raised over the financial problems of the power station which may impinge of the reactor’s safety level.

Slovakia has two nuclear power plants, at Bohunice and Mochovce. Mochovce was originally intended to have four VVER 440-213 on site, but proposals for the third and four reactors have been abandoned. Unit 1 was completed in 1998 and unit 2 is scheduled for completion in late 1999. In 1994 it was proposed that the completion of Mochovce would be financed in part by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Euratom, this would have been the first time that either body had been involved in the financing of a nuclear power plant in Eastern Europe. However, just prior to a decision by the Board of Directors of the EBRD, the Slovakian Government withdrew the project stating that the conditionalities required were unacceptable. One of these conditionalities was that the two VVER 440-230 reactors at Bohunice V-1 would have to be closed by 2000. Slovakian, Czech, Russian, German and French firms finally completed the Mochovce reactors with financing also coming from these countries. In April 1999 the Slovakian Government formerly overturned a previous Government resolution committing to close V-1 by 2000. The Bohunice V-1 reactor has over the last been subject to a € 120 million upgrading program and consequently it operators are planning to continue the units producing power until the end of their design life, until around 2010. However, the Slovakian Government is hoping to be included in the first wave of countries negotiating accession and a closure date for Bohunice V-1 will have to be agreed.

Slovenia is host to the Krsko reactor, which is jointly owned with Croatia. This Westinghouse reactor was built in the 1970s and 80s and is the subject of an ongoing ownership dispute with Croatia. The reactor is said to compare well with similar reactors currently being operated in EU Member States.

Fear of another Chernobyl scale accident lead to Western donors giving about €1.8 billion in grants for nuclear safety programs in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Newly Independent States (NIS) during the last decade. The European Union’s Phare and Tacis programs are the largest contributors to the international efforts with a combined contribution of € 840 million. This massive program has been severely criticised by the Court of Auditor who stated:

In addition to the Community funded programs since 1990 many G7 and EU countries have established bilateral assistance programs. In 1991 a body called the G24 Nuclear Safety Assistance Co-ordination (NUSAC) was established to promote efficient use of resources amongst the multilateral and bilateral program. However, no agency was given the role of co-ordinating Western efforts in this area. In 1993 the NSA was established to give small grants for the first generation of reactors, in return for accelerated closure. The NSA has given grants to Kozloduy, Ignalina, Chernobyl and reactors in Russia.

Despite the considerable funding that has been allocated one of the primary objectives of the G7 and EU, to seek the early closure of the first generation of reactors has not been achieved. This is in part due to the political and economic importance that the reactors play within the energy sector. During the early 1990s when there was significant decrease in electricity demand, due to the slow down in the economy, there was an increase dependency on nuclear power. This is because the nuclear power plants were kept in operation while fossil fuelled power plants were switched off, in order to reduce dependency on Russian gas.

However, it is not just in Eastern Europe that there is some reluctance to accelerate the closure of reactors. There is a genuine fear that another accident in Eastern Europe would make the chance of a reversal in the decline in the Western European nuclear industry virtually impossible. However, at the same time Western construction firms are all to aware that CEE is one of the few regions in the world with an active program for the construction of nuclear power plants, the last EU reactor will be completed in 1999. Therefore contracts for assisting with upgrading of reactors, waste management programs and completion of reactors in CEE are increasingly important to an industry with few contracts.

The nuclear power plants in CEE make substantial contributions to their domestic electricity supply and in some cases to the regional supply. The Trans-European electricity Network (TEN) programs are assisting with the creation of a pan-European electricity grid. Already, the countries in the former CENTRAL network (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) are fully integrated with the UCPTE (Western European) network. Further developments, in particular the finalisation of the Baltic ring will bring most of the accession countries into the Western European electricity network.

The full implementation of the Community Acquis – body of legislation that new members will have to conform to - will take a number of years and is not expected to be completed prior to accession. Calculations undertaken for the European Commission anticipate that the full implementation of environmental Acquis will cost around € 120 billion, the power sector is expected to be the most expensive sector analysed. It is therefore unlikely that the power sector in all accession countries will have fully implemented the Acquis prior to membership of the EU. Consequently power stations will be operating at lower environmental standards than EU facilities; this is seen to be a distortion of the single market. The prices that are charged for electricity in CEE countries is lower than that in the EU, in some sectors, in particular the domestic, by a considerable margin. The entering into force of the EU’s Electricity Directive in February 1999 makes it possible for electricity producers to sell electricity throughout the Union.

Although the Enlargement of the EU offers many possibilities for the nuclear power plants and their constructors it also increases the importance of a number of countries and industries previously formerly uninvolved. Most importantly, the Accession Treaties will have to be unanimously agreed by the existing Member States. Austria, which has been active for many years against nuclear power in Central Europe, is aware of this and passed a resolution that called for the closure of all first generation of reactors and the non-completion of part-built reactors. While in the proposed resolution the Austrian Council of Ministers falls short of calling for a veto of new Members if these conditions were not complied to. The Council make it clear that they would use every opportunity to ensure that higher safety standards were met and binding closure dates agreed too. Given the need for unanimity of support for new members into the EU the concerns of all existing Member States needs to be considered.