Transparency and Public participation

Jan Haverkamp, Senior expert nuclear energy and energy policy at WISE

On 15 April 2020, the Council of State, the Netherlands’s highest administrative court, granted the appeal of Nuclear Transparency Watch member World Information Service on Energy (WISE) to access measurement data following an accident at the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant in the Southern Urals, Russia. It had requested the original of a document from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna (IAEA) that was leaked on a Russian website. The document provides a list of measurement data from the Ru-106 isotope as observed by monitoring stations across Europe.

A study by dozens of renowned European institutes and scientists, based on this and following data, showed that the source of Ru-106 had to be the Mayak reprocessing plant located near the closed city of Ozhersk. The accident allegedly occurred when Russia’s nuclear giant Rosatom attempted to manufacture a Cerium-144 source from relatively fresh burnt-out fuel rods from a Russian nuclear power plant for an Italian / French Euratom research project in late September 2017.

Although the measured values did not pose a danger to the population around the measuring points, the French institute IRSN concluded in November 2017 that “an accident of this magnitude in France would have required to implement locally measures of protection of the populations on a radius of the order of a few kilometres around the location of the release.” To this day, Russia continues to deny that anything has happened in Mayak.

In the weeks after the accident, several research institutes and nuclear authorities reported to the IAEA that they measured Ru-106 in the atmosphere. The IAEA then distributed a list of measurement data via the “for authorities use only” web page USIE, which consequently appeared on the Russian geoenergetics.ru website. The latter is an energy news site close to Rosatom. Also immediately, all kinds of fake news stories started singing around in Russia. Ru-106 would come from Ukraine, or from Romania, or from a satellite that had returned into the atmosphere. Everything, but no incident in Russia.

Meanwhile, WISE received concerned messages from the Mayak area, among others asking whether the document on geoenergetics.ru was genuine. WISE contacted the IAEA, who referred it to the national nuclear authorities, in the case of WISE the Netherlands Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ANVS). WISE asked ANVS to compare the geoenergetics.ru document with the original, or provide access to the original document.

WISE also indicated the possibility to black out data from countries not covered by the Aarhus Convention (and therefore not obliged to release such data) – this concerned the “0” values of all Russian measuring points and a small number of Turkish measurements. Or to give the list in a different form. The ANVS refused to grant access, and also to check with the IAEA whether another solution could be found.

WISE then appealed to the Court of Amsterdam and from there to the Council of State.

There are two fundamental points for WISE:

1. International emissions data must be available to the public under the Aarhus Convention. Only in this way could the people in the Mayak area have been able to put pressure on the Russian authorities in case the leaked list would have appeared to be manipulated.
2. Under the Aarhus Convention, ANVS is required to proactively assist citizens in accessing such information and should therefore have contacted the IAEA.

In January of this year, WISE suddenly received from ANVS the surprising message that the IAEA had produced a public list of all measurement data, although this document is not available on the IAEA website.

Since then, WISE is in the process of comparing both lists (which have a different format). What becomes clear is that the geoenergetics.ru list is a mess. Almost a third of the reported measurements turn out to be doubled – sometimes with changed times, sometimes with values made 1000 times smaller. Especially measurements from Ukraine, Italy, and the Czech Republic. Romanian measurements appear to have shifted in time. Austrian, Serbian and Slovenian data appeared to have mixed up mBq and Bq. The crucial question now remains whether the IAEA is responsible for such a sloppy list, or whether it concerns Russian manipulations before it was leaked via geoenergetics.ru – possibly to cause confusion. Both cases are highly problematic.

WISE is happy with the decision of the Council of State to grant access to the requested information and make clear that authorities have to be pro-active in searching access to environmental information they hold from international institutions.

The Aarhus Convention was adopted to make sure that authorities could be held accountable when they deny citizens the opportunity to receive information and participate in the decision-making process in matters related to the environment.

Along with the individual Member States, EU bodies and institutions are Party to the Convention, and the Aarhus Regulation is the legislative measure that specifically sets out EU obligations under the agreement. This Regulation was found by the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee to be not fully compliant with the Convention in 2008. In its December 2019 European Green Deal Communication the European Commission pledged to revise the Regulation in light of those findings; it also committed to “taking action” to improve citizen and NGO access to justice at the Member State and EU level.

Drafted by Christiana Mauro and Jeremy Wates, NTW’s contribution to the Roadmap public consultation welcomes the initiative, recommending that special attention be paid to the frequent misapplication of the exceptions to the freedom of information obligations of EU institutions, which the European Ombudsman has repeatedly deemed problematic, and stressing that amendments to the Regulation be made unequivocally clear about the changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty to the scope of review mechanisms.

While further consultation is not envisioned in the Roadmap, the submission recommends that civil society be given the opportunity to comment on the Commission’s final amendment proposals, and hopes that the amendment process will be used to revise other problematic aspects of the Regulation, including those relating to access to information.

The outcome of the public consultation will be presented to the European Council and European Parliament, and the Commission is expected to present its amendment proposals by September 30, 2020. More information about the initiative can be found here.

NTW’s initial submission can be found here, and the full text here: RoadmapConsultation.030420

To promote transparency and safety in the nuclear sector, NTW opens important discussions with the European Commission. A new proposal for collaboration was sent to the Commissioner of DG Energy.

See the letter sent on March 27th 2020 by Nadja Zeleznik, Chairwoman of NTW, to Miss Kadri Simson, EU Commissionner of DG Energy –> Letter to Ms Simson

16 February 2020

By Dr David Lowry, Management board member of Nuclear Transparency Watch

Last spring I applied to attend the 2nd NEA [Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD] Workshop on Stakeholder Involvement: Risk Communication titled Dialogues towards a Shared Understanding of Radiological Risks, held at the NEA headquarters in Paris, 24 to 26 September 2019.

On 6 September 2019 I wrote to the conference secretariat: “As an independent consultant working with civil society groups on nuclear risk and uncertainty, I wonder if you can inform me what resources NEA has set aside to support  non-institutionally based researchers – such as myself – to participate in this stakeholder meeting, in respect of travel, accommodation and subsistence costs? Access to appropriate resources is always the key issue for engagement of stakeholders.”

The secretariat replied shortly after: “I understand this issue. Unfortunately, the costs associated to participate in this workshop, such as travel and accommodation, are to be covered by the participants. The NEA is not set up in such a way as to provide funding for participants. Please do know that there are no conference fees. I hope you will still be able to attend the workshop.”

I responded on 9 September: “I am very disappointed in your negative reply. I do not have the resources to pay for travel and accommodation – as well as providing my 40 years of expertise in nuclear policy analysis free to NEA, to assist NEA in formulating its approach to stakeholders and risk. I find it very hard to understand how the NEA thinks it is able to attract a wide range of (usually very under-resourced) interested stakeholders to a meeting on stakeholder involvement without allocating a resource budget in support of the workshop to ensure their attendance to allow them to be involved. By excluding a budget you will succeed in attracting only the more wealthy stakeholders, or those based in the Paris region, which will be very far from representative.”

I then wondered just how representative the invited stakeholders were to this stakeholder conference, so I asked NEA for the full attendance list of participants, plus copies of the presentations made to the meeting.

I received the following negative response from the conference secretariat: “I have been informed that all documents relating to the workshop are reserved to the participants, including the participants list, unless made publicly available with the Committee’s prior approval.”

On 10 October 2019, and by now increasingly frustrated by the lack of co-operative engagement by NEA, I responded:“I am both very surprised and disappointed at your curt and unhelpful email this morning.”

I then stressed: ”In an NEA information briefing on ‘Stakeholder Confidence and Transparency’ the NEA asserts in the very first paragraph: ‘Transparency is achieved with an ongoing process if stakeholders are given access to information… transparency as a practice is fostered by implementing clear and observable institutional frameworks and ensuring openness and authenticity in behaviour.’

Prima facie, NEA is in breach of its own dictum on disclosure in refusing to provide the attendee list, which, to be sure, is hardly the most security sensitive document in the nuclear domain.”

NEA clearly were now feeling uncomfortable about convening an international meeting on a theme of working with stakeholders, but barely inviting any stakeholders to participate. But when I asked British nuclear regulator ONR to ask for the info on my behalf, as they had two platform speakers, they were refused twice. I persuaded ONR to escalate it to NEA D-G Magwood. Apparently they did, and I got the list four months after requesting it!

I asked the UK ONR whether could I have a copy of their presentation. ONR told me: “ONR didn’t make any formal presentations at this event. [We] moderated two panel sessions, as described in the programme available on the NEA website, but those were without powerpoint (or otherwise) and focused on introducing the panel topics and members. We then chaired the sessions, dealing with questions from the floor.” 

Then on 22 November, ONR let me know that it had spoken to NEA and suggested a release of at least the names of organisations that attended. “But it seems that NEA has taken a policy decision not to release the information (names or organisations) more widely. I realise this is disappointing, but there is no further action we can take – it is NEA’s call, not ONR’s.”

The bizarre thing about all this is I had a place at this event, but had to turn it down when NEA told me no funds had been allocated to support travel or accommodation for NGO stakeholders. Had I been able to afford to participate, I could have legitimately picked up the participants list.

Then, out of the blue, on 7 February 2020, I received a message from the NEA conference secretariat:“Please find attached a revised list. As noted in my previous message, the first list was generated from our database which had some organisations registered as “miscellaneous”. You will now find these highlighted in yellow in the attached document. I also note that the participant from Iceland was not able to attend, hence I have taken that organisation off the list.”

I have reproduced the list in full as Annex A below. The list reveals that out of a total 109 participating organisations, only 9 were in any way describable as non-official stakeholders, eg CSOs. This shows a massive and utterly unjustifiable imbalance towards pro-nuclear interests.

20200216_David_Lowry_OECD_NEA_Stakeholders_conference__LIST_Annex_A

Conclusion

NEA cannot make publicity it is hosting an international meeting on stakeholder engagement, but only allow well-resourced stakeholders to participate, having allocated no budget line for accommodation or travel for civil society organisations (CSOs).

Initially, NEA refused to reveal which Civil Society / NGO groups had shown up to participate, because – I believe – they were embarrassed that so few were there. Aside from representatives of civil society groups invited (and remunerated) as speakers, there was virtually no civil society representation. The final list of attendees, released after four months of pressure from me, shows the balance of participants was about 95% pro nuclear institutional interests, 5% civil society or non-aligned interested parties. To label such an imbalanced event a “Stakeholder Engagement” meeting is an abuse of language.

The nuclear industry cannot be allowed to pretend they believe in transparency, then practice secrecy, as NEA did in this sorry saga. Because, like a dog with a bone, I refused to let go in this, I finally forced disclosure. But this should have come automatically.

NEA needs to learn the lessons: the first is, it needs to abide by the dictionary definition of transparency, and deliver it in future!

 

During the General Assembly of Nuclear Transparency on December 11th 2019, a specific session was dedicated to interaction with Prof Gilbert Eggermont on various topics related to transparency and public participation. 

Prof G. Eggermont is an expert in radiation protection and he was president of Belgian IRPA (International Radiation Protection Association). He took part in the crisis management of Mol after the waste scandal in 1988-92 where he carried out the nuclear safety and waste management evaluation. He has been member of the scientific Council of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC), the Belgian nuclear regulator. He has chaired the Belgian Health Council working group on nuclear emergency planning after Fukushima. He is a critical expert in the governance of nuclear activities in particular in the power sector. He is in favor of transparency and participation of the public in nuclear decision-making, as NTW does. He worked a lot on technology and risk assessment with precaution in society, as well as on the compliance of the nuclear power with the criteria on sustainable development (he lead the PISA programme for integration of humanities in nuclear research in Mol).

After a brief presentation, Prof G. Eggermont exchanged with NTW members on the basis of questions they sent to him and that he prepared prior to the meeting. 

What came out from this collaborative session is that the nuclear field still lacks of transparency and the tradition of secrecy is very strong. Much more is to be achieved by governments to enhance transparency and public participation in the decision making process.

–> See the minutes of the meeting: Presentation Prof Eggermont

Author: Honorine Rey has a political sciences and project management background. She is a consultant for NTW, and in this frame she is involved as a member of the coordination team in the European Joint Programme EURAD on radioactive waste management.

Jan Haverkamp, vice-chair of NTW, senior expert nuclear energy and energy policy at WISE

3 February 2020

The Dutch Minister of Infrastructure and Water informed Parliament on 17 January that the responsibility for the preparation of nuclear policies will be taken away from the nuclear regulator ANVS (Authority Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection) and moved to a new department at the Ministry.

This followed an intensive evaluation period at the Authority, assessing its first years of functioning after the Netherlands established a specialised and organisationally independent nuclear regulatory body. In the evaluation, it was found that the double mandate – independent nuclear oversight and policy support – was not optimal. Nuclear Transparency Watch and its Dutch members WISE and LAKA on several occasions in the Netherlands and during the bi-annual ENSREG conferences criticised the double-mandate set-up as potentially leading to conflict of interest. They expressed among others their concern that while answering parliamentary questions, the Minister was flanked not by her civil servants, but by officials from ANVS, giving the impression that it was ANVS who was making and defending nuclear policy instead of keeping an independent oversight over it.

Jan Haverkamp, vice-chair of NTW and senior expert nuclear energy and energy policy at WISE, commented: “When the Authority would co-author policies that later could appear to lead to some form of nuclear risk, its regulatory function could be impaired by a sense of loyalty to the policies it helped develop. We have seen this leading to sub-optimal situations in authorities throughout Europe, and, indeed, for example in the situation around the (international) legal need for an environmental impact assessment and public participation concerning environmental questions for the lifetime extension of the Dutch Borssele nuclear plant. We are happy that ANVS took the criticism on board. A clear separation of regulatory functions from nuclear related policy-making is a large step forwards towards a truly independent regulatory environment. We very much welcome this decision.”

In a reaction paper, ANVS notes the IAEA IRSS mission advised to bundle as much as possible the rather limited knowledge and skills on nuclear safety and radiation protection within the state governance structures. It therefore will have to find the best way in which its expertise can remain available also for other parts of the state structure that need that, without interference into its regulatory independence.

Dr. Petar Kardjilov, a qualified expert at NTW

The lack of transparency in Bulgarian nuclear power industry has remained constant since the Chernobyl disaster. In Bulgaria there was no official announcement until the third day of the catastrophe of Lenin NPP reactor 4 and the state media were silent. When the government finally communicated news of the accident is was presented as limited and not particularly dangerous. Emphasis was placed on the fact that there was absolutely no danger to Bulgaria, although the radioactive cloud reached the country within a few days. The situation has not changed much since the totalitarian era.

The 2019 media freedom ranking of Reporters without Borders Bulgaria for the second consecutive year remains at a terrifying 111th place – last place in the European Union and the Balkans. Key obstacles for journalists are an inefficient justice system and corruption. One of the most prominent indications of this situation is the manner of informing the public and considering issues in the field of nuclear energy. Government and opposition politicians compete with one another each week in in the televised promotion of Bulgarian nuclear power plant construction needs (with old Russian reactors and in the seismic area of the ​​Vrancha fault) in the Belene district on the Danube. Yet information about the problems, risks and incidents that have occurred at the existing Kozloduy NPP barely break through in the most influential media and are factually complete and correct in only a few independent Internet news media. The last incident in Unit 6 of Kozloduy NPP on Wednesday 3rd July was yet another case of concealing information in this area.

The following message appeared on the web page of Kozloduy NPP on 3rd July: “On 3rd July, 2019 at 1:50 pm the Sixth Kozloduy NPP Unit was disconnected from the country’s energy system after the electric protection was activated. All systems of the block have worked according to the design algorithms. At the moment the Nuclear Power Plant teams remove the causes of electrical protection activation. Once the equipment is operational, Unit 6 will again become part of the power system.” However, no such message was uploaded on the Energy Ministry website neither was it published on the Nuclear Regulatory Agency website. However the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, Lachezar Kostov said in an interview for Routers the same afternoon: “The shutdown was triggered because of an anomaly in the second circuit – the power generation equipment and not due to a fault in the plant’s nuclear reactor. There was no danger of any radioactive contamination”.

All of evening television news networks on television channels broadcasted only a brief interview with the Energy Minister Temenujka Petkova, who assured the public that everything was fine and hat her colleagues from the Kozloduy NPP had acted quickly, correctly and professionally. Only the private national television station bTV invited the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and current independent expert on nuclear energy Prof. Georgi Kaschiev to comment the day after the incident.

According to Prof. Kaschiev the technical cause of the incident is the loosening of a signal cable in one of the terminals. This resulted in a short circuit that activated the mechanism for electrical protection of the generator and shut down the entire generator. He reported that there were at least five similar incidents in Unit 6 in 2005, 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2017 stating that such incidents are far from harmless and their accumulation is a serious alarm for professionals. Prof. Kaschiev explained that a huge flow of energy moves from the reactor, which is transformed into steam, the steam rotates the turbine and the mechanical energy of rotation in the generator turns into electricity. When you put a plug at the end of this stream the system may break. Therefore, the turbine is immediately shut down automatically, the reactor power is reduced as a group of drivers is thrown straight into it and others move downwards with a working speed. In this case, it is good that they have not lost the vacuum in the condensers. They can take up to 40% of the nominal steam flow, not through the turbine but through the condensers, so they have to reduce the reactor power to 40%. This process is very heavy. It happens within seconds with great changes in temperature and pressure. The reduction in reactor power is delayed by a few seconds, and there is a huge amount of energy in the primary circuit. As a general rule, the pressure in the secondary circuit is increased and protective devices are activated which release steam into the atmosphere. This creates a sound that is heard for kilometers, said Kaschiev and added:

“This is a thermal shock to the equipment and, if there are any defects, they are generally expanding, new ones may emerge. The number of such modes is limited over the lifetime of the reactor. Each such regime consumes a part of this resource. The power must be increased by 1% for one hour, and in this mode it drops from 100% to 40% within a few seconds. So from this point of view incidents like this are definitely undesirable. For example, for nuclear fuel tablets (fuel pins) at nominal power the average temperature is 1200 degrees or more. In the event of a sharp fall in the temperature, cracks in the tablets may occur. The fuel tablets are the first barrier, they retain the radioactive fission products. However, under such conditions gaseous products such as crypton, xenon, iodine are released out of them and accumulate under the shells, and if there are cracks in the shells, gas can go out of the coolant.”

In 2016, a five-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court decided that the lifetime of the Kozloduy NPP units 5 and 6 could be extended without environmental impact assessments (EIA). The Court’s decision was taken despite the firm position of many organizations, citizens and two Romanian ministers that a full EIA should be carried out to extend the operation of the old reactors. On November 6, the National Regulator Agency issued a license to extend Unit 5 operation for 10 years, ignoring 11 problems identified by the IAEA Pre-SALTO mission in their nuclear safety assessment of both units. In their report, Pre-SALTO experts state there are 11 problems concerning “fundamental areas for improvement in the future”. This subject had a plausible representation in Bulgaria only by two news media on the Internet.

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A second joint meeting between Romanian and Bulgarian experts, citizens, NGOs and representatives of the Bulgarian State Enterprise for Radioactive Waste occurred in Craiova, Romania on 17 July. The meeting was conducted as a part of the Project Complaint Mechanism (PCM) on behalf of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The PCM was triggered by the civil society of Craiova and Dolj District due to the Bulgarian project to build a National Repository for low and intermediate-active short and long-lived radioactive waste on the site of Kozloduy NPP, only four kilometers away from the Danube and the border with Romania. Funding is administered by the EBRD and is within the Kozloduy NPP Units 1-4 Decommissioning Programme and the National Disposal Facility. There is also a media blackout in Bulgaria about number of violations of national and international law and the IAEA recommendations concerning the National repository. Representatives of Romanian and Bulgarian civil society have decided to send a letter of complaint to the donor countries, the European Commission and the EBRD on Monday 29 July. We will inform about the contents of the letter and the problems with the National Radioactive Waste Repository in Bulgaria in a subsequent article.

Petar Kardjilov obtained a PhD in Public Communications and Information Sciences at Sofia and specializes in risk and crisis communication. He Is also a public relations expert, member of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria and Nuclear Transparency Watch.