EU nuclear reactors need $32bn repairs

Almost all of Europe’s nuclear reactors need repair, to the cost of $32bn, according to a report by the European Commission

 

A new report, released Thursday, undertook a safety review of the 130 active nuclear reactors in the EU.

EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said that nuclear plants “nearly everywhere” were in need of improvements in order to bring them up to the highest safety standards.

The report was carried out in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, which occurred in March 2011, in Japan.

The meltdown at Fukushima showed that multiple natural disasters could occur at once, knocking out the cooling systems entirely.

The assessment involved a ‘stress test’ which tests how nuclear reactors would fare against a range of failures and natural disasters, in order to ensure a similar catastrophe does not happen in the EU.

Some of the requirements detailed in the reports include making the nuclear plants more resistant to quakes, floods, and the loss of cooling.

In the event of an electricity blackout, five reactors, including four in Finland and Sweden, would be unable to prevent a disaster if electricity and cooling systems were not restored within an hour.