Nuclear safety requirements getting tougher

Nuclear safety requirements are becoming more and more stringent all over the world. This was prompted in many ways by the nuclear accidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima, Olga Lugovskaya, Head of the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department (Gosatomnadzor), said on 17 December, BelTA has learned.

“Developers of nuclear technologies have improved safety systems after the nuclear accidents happened. In order to move forward in the field of nuclear safety and nuclear energy, we need to learn our lessons. We need to analyze what we overlooked, what we mismanaged, what we neglected. These issues are approached very seriously by the international community. Recommendations were developed to make sure national regulators will take into account new realities to maximize nuclear safety,” she noted.

According to Olga Lugovskaya, when the Fukushima accident happened (this was due to a set of unpredictable circumstances), the global community responded by intensive work aimed to prevent such accidents in the future. A number of special recommendations were developed, including by the IAEA.

July 2013 marked a significant consolidation of the Belarusian nuclear and radiation safety regulator, Olga Lugovskaya added.