Nuclear Safety in Central and Eastern Europe: Fifty Shades of Conditionality Impacts

Transcription

1 Blagoy Kitanov Central European University, Budapest Draft paper Nuclear Safety in Central and Eastern Europe: Fifty Shades of Conditionality Impacts Introduction Nuclear energy has historically been at the core of the European Union's (EU) energy cooperation and has been regarded as an important fix for reducing energy dependence and more recently greenhouse gas emissions. However, the attitude of many actors has changed after the major nuclear accidents of Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, and nuclear safety has become of foremost concern in the EU. Nuclear energy also introduces a significant political aspect in the field of energy policy. Safety of nuclear power facilities surfaced as an important international issue in the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The simultaneous dynamics of nuclear path dependency in CEE (nuclear still being a major source of electricity production in many of the "new" member states of the EU) and the pressures originating from the Union for restructuring the energy sector and even a complete shutdown of old Soviet reactors produce processes and outcomes worthy to be studied. In 1992 in Munich the G-7 countries (US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Japan and Italy) agreed that Russian-designed nuclear power plants have to be closed down due to safety concerns in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster and that financial assistance should be given to replace nuclear energy with alternative sources. However, the policy later changed from closing to upgrading the Soviet reactors with the financial support of the PHARE program and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). This was intended to be a short-term "emergency" fix for the plants considered the most dangerous by Western experts followed soon after by a complete shutdown. However, the closure of those facilities happened much later than expected and it was not until EU membership conditionality kicked in that the CEE countries had to eventually close their old reactors. The countries affected by this conditionality were Bulgaria, Slovakia and Lithuania. The Czech Republic also experienced European pressures but not to close down existing plants but rather not to build additional capacities. Austria was a very active actor drawing the attention of the EU to nuclear safety issues. It engaged in active diplomacy with both Slovakia and the Czech Republic and the efforts of its government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) resulted in outcomes worthy to be assessed. Last but not least, those struggles influenced to a great extent EU policy-making in the area and resulted in the first ever Nuclear Safety directive adopted in This paper will therefore focus on a two-way research question: first, how have the EU and other international bodies (EBRD, G-7) influenced the development of the nuclear energy sector in the CEE member states (and more specifically Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) and second, how did those countries influence the emergence and development of EU-level nuclear safety

2 legislation and institutions? The first question involves three strands of analysis: first, the influence of international funding institutions on CEE states when providing them with funds to upgrade their nuclear facilities, then the bilateral relations between Austria on the one hand and the Czech Republic and Slovakia on the other, and finally the concept of membership conditionality that the EU imposed in the cases of Bulgaria and Slovakia.The existing literature usually argues that the latter factor has been the most important but I will argue that the current situation of the nuclear energy sectors in CEE cannot be understood without taking into account the first two. Besides, EU membership conditionality did not come all of a sudden rather, it reflected what happened after EBRD and the PHARE program financed the upgrade of reactors and thus revived the nuclear industries in those states and benefitted Western engineering firms.the second research question requires an account of the variation of risk aversion in "old" member states combined with different safety practices and sectoral specificities in those countries, all of which impede EU-wide adoption of detailed nuclear safety standards. The paper will proceed as follows: first, an overview of the developments of the nuclear energy sectors of three CEE states after the fall of communism will be given, namely Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The reason why those case studies are selected is that the first two countries were affected by EU membership conditionality and had to close down significant part of their nuclear capacities. The Czech Republic is an interesting case because it was a primary target of Austrian diplomatic efforts to block the construction of additional nuclear reactors and was also subject to threats to veto its EU membership. In short, all of those countries faced the possibility of their EU membership being delayed or blocked because of nuclear safety issues. The article will then proceed to provide an overview of the explanations in the existing literature on the impact EU and other organizations' conditionality had on those countries. This article will expand and contribute to the existing literature by examining the influence of those international actors' actions not just on states (as existing literature does) but also on non-state entities, i.e. NGOs and domestic and foreign companies. Last but not least, in the third section I will provide an overview of the current EU nuclear energy legislation and competencies and will touch upon the largely understudied issue of the influence of the described developments during the accession of CEE countries on EU nuclear energy legislation and institutions with the adoption of the Nuclear Safety Directive and the Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management Directive as well as the creation of the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) and the Western European Nuclear Regulators' Association (WENRA). Historical Overview of Nuclear Energy Sector Developments: To Close or not to Close? Nuclear technology was the top-notch technology in the 1960s and 1970s when most of the CEE states nuclear power base was built drawing on Soviet technology. Just like the big industrial enterprises were a source of pride for the communist government, so were the big electricityproducing power-horses to make sure the big plants operate. The growth of nuclear energy in the former communist countries was based on four reactor models: the graphite-moderated RBMK (the Chernobyl reactors were of that kind) and the three types of pressurized water reactors: VVER- 440/230, VVER-440/213 and VVER Western experts generally considered the RBMK and the VVER-440/230 as high risk. The experts were concerned about the absence of safety features which

3 were common in the West and the ageing of the reactors' pressure vessels. i International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection missions to various nuclear power plants in CEE revealed major problems in safety conditions. ii The Western countries formulated a strategy towards the issue of nuclear safety in 1992 at the G-7 summit in Munich. A multilateral action program was developed which aimed to shut down more dangerous plants and replace lost capacity by alternative sources and energy efficiency measures. iii The strategy focused on short-term safety improvements in the units which needed most urgent upgrades. The financing for those upgrades came mainly from aid provided by the EU's PHARE program and from loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and from the newly formed in 1991 EBRD. Bulgaria Bulgaria's Kozloduy plant was the largest Soviet-built plant outside of the former Soviet Union with 6 units. In November 1990 and in June 1991 there were IAEA on-site missions to units 1-4 which highlighted poor work practices and a number of specific safety issues. The experts warned the Bulgarian government that it was risky to continue operating the first 2 units. In million ECU of PHARE funds were committed to nuclear safety projects in Bulgaria. iv In 1993 the country became the first to receive a 24 million ECU grant from the EBRD Nuclear Safety Account (NSA) for short-term upgrades at Kozloduy and the first to accept explicit conditions for reactor closure in exchange for the financial assistance. v The government committed to closing units 1 and 2 by the end of 1997 and units 3 and 4 by the end of Subsequent IAEA missions acknowledged that there were significant improvements in the management and operation of units 1-4 but kept stressing that safety still lagged behind Western norms. By 1995 it became clear that the Bulgarian government did not intend to honour its commitments under the agreement with EBRD insisting that with proper maintenance units 1-2 could operate until 2004 and units 3 and 4 until vi The reason for that was the fact that the state-owned National Electricity Company (NEC) which owns Kozloduy did not want to write off so soon the substantial investment it made out of its own funds for modernization of the nuclear facilities. In addition, the Western insistence that 4 units in Kozoloduy be shut down was seen in Sofia as unfair and unjustified. The wave of pride Bulgarians traditionally have in the nuclear industry ( one of our few competitive industries ) was unleashed and pro-nuclear commentators were relying on the stated national aim to be the energy center of the Balkans vii which was impossible to achieve without Kozloduy 1-4. One commentator called the signing of the EBRD agreement an act of national nihilism viii. This created tensions between Bulgaria and the Western donors but because the loan conditionality was not strong enough an incentive Bulgaria could renege on its commitment. Still, the tension was to an extent relieved when Bulgaria agreed on further inspections and that templates would be cut from the reactor vessel and submitted for analysis in 1996 to a Russian institute. ix The results of the analysis turned out to be more positive than expected and in the beginning of 1998 the country declared that it would not shut down the units as agreed with EBRD, at least not until the modernization of units 5 and 6 is finished. The bank had to bow to necessity and agreed. x But in the meanwhile, the issue of the Bulgarian nuclear future met the issue of EU accession and Bulgarian stance had to change.the Bulgaria-EU Accession partnership agreement stressed as one of the priorities the development of a realistic timetable for the shutdown of Kozloduy units 1-4.

4 This was combined with a rising anti-nuclear stance of some member states (notably Austria but more on its actions will be described in the sections dealing with Slovakia and the Czech Republic) and of the European Parliament. The Cologne European Council in 1999 also officially asked the Commission to examine nuclear safety as part of enlargement progress reports. In its 1999 progress report the Commission recommended that Bulgaria be invited for enlargement talks only on the condition that the country would commit to a timetable for closure of Kozloduy. xi The domestic political resistance to a shutdown grew even stronger. Prime Minister Ivan Kostov called the Commission demands meaningless dictate xii. The pro-nuclear lobby kept declaring that once the 4 blocks of Kozloduy are closed Bulgaria will have energy shortages and that other Balkan countries dependant on Bulgarian electricity imports will stay in the dark. xiii More expert voices, including the head of the State Nuclear Committee, were arguing that the decision for closure was based on the West s obsolete and incomplete knowledge of the technology and that with another safety upgrade program the life of the 4 VVER-440/230s could be extended well over the dates EU demanded. An interview I conducted with a former official in the Bulgarian Ministry of Energy reveals that there were a lot of meetings with the Commission at that period in which the Bulgarian experts were trying to enlighten the Commission officials and to explain to them that the West had a general misunderstanding about the safety characteristics of the Soviet nuclear reactors. In another interview with a Bulgarian former head of unit in the Commission dealing with nuclear safety issues and a renowned nuclear energy expert, she says A psychosis was created regarding the Soviet reactors (...) People from outside who had no idea about nuclear power were giving opinions. She also claims that the identified weaknesses of the VVER 230s are not typical only for this type of reactors. Other reactors with the same shortcomings are still operating in other [European] countries. In any case, the expert interviewees consider the decision to close down Kozloduy 1-4, and especially units 3 and 4, to be to a large extent political rather than just technical. In the end, the Bulgarian government and the Commission reached an agreement according to which Bulgaria committed to closing units 1 and 2 by 2004 and units 3 and 4 by 2007, which the country kept. According to my interviewees that was still a modest achievement for Bulgaria since the Commission wanted the reactors closed even earlier. During an informal talk with a Bulgarian participant in the accession negotiations of Bulgaria, he answered the question if he thinks Bulgarian national interests in the area of nuclear energy were not well defended during the negotiations in the following way: Don t you think that it was in the national interest of Bulgaria to become an EU member? Slovakia The nuclear energy developments of Slovakia have revolved around two issues: shutting down of the old units at the nuclear plant in Jaslovske Bohunice and building additional nuclear capacity in the Mochovce site. After the split of Czechoslovakia in the end of 1992 Slovakia had one functioning nuclear power plant in Bohunice which consisted of two VVER-440/230s and two VVER- 440/213s which together accounted for around half of Slovak electricity production at that time. Mochovce had four unfinished VVER-440/213s, two of which almost finished and two which were far from completion. IAEA groups visited Bohunice, twice in 1990 and once in Like in Bulgaria, they found numerous problems in operating procedures, fire safety and other issues, and consequently

5 recommended a comprehensive upgrade program. They were especially worried about the VVER 230 model (the one Kozloduy units 1-4 had), which was believed to have design issues xiv. As a result, the plant's owner Slovenske Elektrarne (SE) launched the first major upgrade program of units 1-2 called "Small reconstruction". xv The program was mostly financed by PHARE and was completed in Another upgrade program followed between 1996 and 1999 which was called "Gradual reconstruction" and cost $180 million out of SE's own funds. xvi The bulk of the work was done by foreign companies (most notably the German Siemens and the Czech Skoda) but local Slovak companies were also involved. Western experts were satisfied with the upgrades but as in the case of Bulgaria they did not see them as a long-term solution. Again similarly to Bulgaria, the stateowned utility invested considerable amounts from its own funds and was reluctant to shut down the plant. Moreover, the government of Vladimir Meciar was strongly committed to nuclear energy both for economic and for political reasons. According to an interview with an expert from a Slovak environmental NGO, nuclear power was perceived not just as contributing to the energy independence of Slovakia, but also as helping nation building in the young country, which needed to identify itself with big infrastructure projects to be proud of. However, EU conditionality again played a strong role in making Slovakia close down Bohunice 1 and 2. The EU-Slovakia Accession Partnership of 1998 set as a requirement that Slovakia prepares a realistic decommissioning plan for units 1 and 2 in Bohunice. The change of government also played a role Meciar's nationalistic government was replaced by Mikulas Dzurinda's reformist government, which re-evaluated the country's stance on nuclear power in the direction of a more pro-eu and pro-market based policy questioning the long-term need for six or even eight nuclear reactors. In September 1999 the Slovak government announced that Bohunice 1 and 2 will be shut down at the end of 2006 and 2008 respectively much earlier than planned and the commitment was kept. As in the case of Bulgaria, EU aid was promised to fund the decommissioning activities for units 1 and 2 and upgrade activities for units 3 and 4. The other controversial issue in Slovak nuclear sector development was the construction of the Mochovce power plant. The nuclear power plant in Mochovce was part of the communist-era plan to build a nuclear plant in every Czechoslovak region. Building started in 1984 but after the collapse of communism the project was threatened to halt due to insufficient financing. The Slovak authorities were negotiating with Western companies and financial institutions to secure funding for the project and after lengthy negotiations, in 1995 the EBRD agreed to a DM loan. xvii However the bank attached strings to the loan, most notably that the first two units at Bohunice need to be closed. That was an unacceptable condition for the Meciar government so it withdrew the loan request and started seeking finance elsewhere, most notably from a Czech-Russian consortium. The rejection of the EBRD proposal led some Western companies to pull out of the project (Bayernwerk and Preussen Elektra). xviii In the end, SE announced that Skoda in a consortium with the Russian firms Atomenergoexport and Zarubezhatomenergostroy (now Atomstroyexport) had won the public tender for the completion of Mochovce. Possibly to diminish Western security concerns, SE commissioned the safety-related equipment to be done by a Siemens-Framatome (now AREVA) consortium. xix The first two units in Mochovce were completed and connected to the grid in 1998 and The whole process of building Mochovce, however, was fiercely opposed by Slovakia's antinuclear neighbour Austria. Austria is one of the most prominent anti-nuclear states in the EU,

6 rejecting by a referendum the activation of a power plant in Zwenterdorf in the 1970s. As early as 1994, 1.3 million Austrians signed a petition against the completion of Mochovce. xx Austria was also trying to persuade the EBRD to withhold funding for the project. xxi In the end Slovakia secured other (mostly Russian) sources so that strategy was not very successful. Later, Austria threatened to veto EU talks about granting Slovakia early entry into the Union. However, this threat carried little weight because Slovakia's chances for early admission at that time were anyway pretty slim. In the end, once units 1 and 2 came online, Austria abandoned its protest against Mochovce and focused its attention to stopping the construction of the two reactors at the Temelin power plant in the Czech Republic. Czech Republic Heavy industry in the state socialist system required a reliable supply of electricity to power large, highly energy intensive Stalinist type industrial plants. Czechoslovakia was no exception and the decision to build Temelin was taken in In 1986 construction works started but after the Chernobyl accident it was halted and reviewed. IAEA studies found flaws in the design and recommended replacement of the instrumentation and control systems. xxii In 1992 the government of Vaclav Klaus decided to complete Temelin without an economic analysis of electricity supply and demand needs and without public debate xxiii a course of action common for Bulgarian and Slovak authorities as well. Following a controversial bidding process in 1993, Westinghouse was awarded a contract to apply Western technology to the Soviet designed reactors. Austria had been opposed to the Temelin project since Westinghouse got the contract to complete it. Austria's strategy was to escalate the conflict as wide and high as possible, involving other European states, international NGOs and the EU. The then chancellor Wolfgang Schussel insisted that common European standards need to be developed in the area of nuclear safety and argued that a state needs to have a role in protecting its citizens from an environmental problem even if its origin is in another state. xxiv In September 2000 pressure escalated when blockades were set up on the Austrian-Czech border. xxv Austria also threatened to block the closing of the energy chapter of the Czech accession negotiations. Austrian behaviour soured the relations between the two countries and some Czech politicians used the issue to awaken nationalist resentment and brought out old Austro-Hungarian antagonisms. xxvi In the end of 2000 the European Commission intervened and offered to act as a mediator in the bilateral conflict. The result was the Melk agreement, according to which Austria withdrew its threat to block the energy chapter on the condition that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) would be made on Temelin with EU participation. That constituted a precedent since an EIA cannot be retroactive. In any case, the EIA was carried out and the conclusion was that the environmental impacts were acceptable. xxvii The first reactor was connected to the grid in 2000 and the second in Nevertheless, Temelin was plagued with problems since its test mode there were turbine problems, leaking oil control valves and cracked pipes. xxviii Austria took that as a chance to point out that it was a mistake to put Temelin on-grid and called once again for "necessary tests according to EU standards and under EU supervision". xxix But at that time there were no such EU standards. There was no legal basis for halting Temelin or supervising it on an EU level. Austria acted to make nuclear safety an issue for consideration during accession and chancellor Schussel asked Commission President Romano Prodi to make Temelin an issue of European concern and to initiate the process

7 for drafting common EU nuclear safety standards. xxx Although Austria was not successful in preventing the construction of the Temelin plant, it did manage to stimulate discussion for the need of European nuclear safety legislation in the hostile environment of traditionally nuclear states such as France and the UK. More on that process will follow in the last section of this paper. The Impact of Conditionality on the CEE Nuclear Sectors: Killing or Reviving the Beast? Existing literature argues that the higher the degree of mismatch between the "extent of government aversion" to the policies pushed forward by the international bodies and the "rewards attached to implementing them" xxxi the less likely that conditionality is effective. Studies on EU conditionality in the case of CEE nuclear energy sector contend that that this simple principal-agent framework can explain why both Bulgaria and Slovakia evaded their commitments to the EBRD and G-7 but bowed to EU membership conditionality. xxxii Both countries fought for what they believed to be the right policy but being a top priority, EU membership overrode the economic and political incentives of those countries to keep nuclear power plants open. To put it simply, EU membership was perceived as a much bigger reward than the EBRD loans and PHARE aid, which were not even sufficient to cover all of the upgrade costs. National electricity operators had to invest from their own resources which increased the cost of complying with the policies the EBRD and G-7 wanted to see. This economic argument is not the only one literature has identified. In his literature review Checkel xxxiii summarizes three reasons why conditionality fails: politicization, domestic ownership problems and fragmented policy environments. The first two factors were especially relevant in the case of CEE nuclear sector. Reasons why CEE countries were so resistant to closure are illustrated in an article dealing with the Czech discourse on the expansion of the Temelin nuclear power plant, xxxiv which was extremely politicized. On the "agent" side, the Czech government believed that nuclear energy guarantees energy independence of the country because on the one hand it strengthens the Czech position in the European electricity market and on the other hand it diminishes the energy dependence on Russia. Slovakia politicized the issue even further when PM Robert Fico did not hesitate to characterize the closure of the old units at Bohunicean international conspiracy against Slovakia: I am convinced that Slovakia was deprived of energy independence intentionally, because they had to know what it would mean for Slovakia. [ ] Today in Europe, being strong no longer means having lots of tanks and lots of rockets; being strong means having one s own energy sources as well as energy sources on the territory of foreign countries. xxxv On the "principal" side the issue was also often overpoliticized. The West believed that Soviet nuclear technology was high risk by virtue of it being Soviet and because the Chernobyl reactor was Soviet-produced. As some of my interviewees point out, very often non-experts were making claims which did not correspond to technological reality. The second factor domestic ownership problems means that CEE countries were often unable to implement the fundamental changes to their energy systems that the demands of the funding donors required. For example, EBRD demanded deregulation of electricity prices, which translates into price increase because subsidies would be ended. This was (and still is) politically unacceptable for the governments of the poorer CEE countries which seek re-election. Electricity prices are a sensitive issue and as Bulgaria recently demonstrated they could trigger mass protests.

8 In February 2013, protests against "unjustifiably high" electricity bills caused mass protest and destabilization in government. xxxvi Another example of policy ownership problems has been the difficulty of Bulgaria and Slovakia to set up strong nuclear regulators which can independently oversee the safety of their nuclear power plants. The European Commission in its progress report on Bulgaria pointed out that the country has significant difficulties guaranteeing the independence of the energy regulator. xxxvii Conditionality impacts are usually analysed in the context of state institutions and on the level of governments. However, this article aims to outline the effects conditionality had on the nuclear business sector and on the anti-nuclear NGO sector. At first glance, conditionality significantly hurt the nuclear industries in the studied countries. Interviews with two representatives of Bulgarian nuclear engineering companies conducted in 2012 confirm this observation: "Many companies went bankrupt since the decision to close down Kozloduy". But what both the company representatives and the former head of unit at the Commission acknowledged some benefits of the Western involvement: "People working in Kozloduy opened up, started communicating with Western specialists and exchanged expertise". Very importantly, during the upgrade process in all of the cases Western companies were involved (American, German, French, Russian). Western nuclear industry was eager to find new markets and the policy to upgrade Russian reactors established a sizeable market benefitting European and American nuclear engineering companies. Local companies were also involved and collaborated with their Western counterparts. For example, a check at the public procurement registers shows that the biggest Bulgarian nuclear engineering company, Risk Engineering, has won many tenders for maintenance and upgrade works and for consultancy activities, often together with American (Westinghouse) or Russian companies. Moreover, international financial assistance to upgrade Kozloduy's and Bohunice's highest risk reactors actually extended the operational lives of those facilities and kept the nuclear industry across CEE alive. This article argues that Western-funded upgrade programs incentivized CEE governments to prolong the utilization of the power plants beyond their initially scheduled decommissioning dates possibly longer than would have been achievable without any Western intervention. This can be termed the paradox of nuclear conditionality instead of "killing" the industry it ensured that it was kept busy for another decade and a half during the 1990s and early 2000s. The nuclear industry has been slowing down in Europe and especially in the "old" member states. Germany has decided to phase out its nuclear power and Belgium and Switzerland have announced they would not construct additional capacity. Only France, Finland and possibly the UK are currently building or planning to build additional facilities. In this market environment, Western nuclear companies need to look for bigger markets and the traditionally nuclear region of CEE is one of them. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are all considering to build (unit 7 at Kozloduy, units 3 and 4 at Temelin) or already building (units 3 and 4 in Mochovce) additional nuclear capacity to compensate for the closed reactors as a result of EU conditionality. Russian, American and Western European companies participate or want to participate in all of those projects (for example, Areva, Westinghouse and Atomstroyexport all bid in the Czech public tender for Temelin 3 and 4 xxxviii ). This demonstrates that in the aftermath of the closures the CEE states' desire to keep the nuclear option influences the nuclear engineering companies, both foreign and domestic.

9 Conditionality also had another consequence, but this time on the anti-nuclear front it strengthened to a certain extent the anti-nuclear NGOs and connected them transnationally. However, the effects on NGOs were much more limited than on the nuclear business sector. Bulgarian, Slovak and Czech NGOs were never successful in counteracting their governments' positions favouring nuclear energy but their voice at least started being heard. For example, although they were making many attempts to raise public awareness it was not until Austrian pressure and EU-mandated EIA in the Czech Republic that local NGOs were given an arena to participate in public hearings. xxxix In addition, in the Melk process the role of NGOs was formalized they had to present their views during public hearings. The most successful groups opposing Temelin, Mochovce and Belene (the project for a second nuclear power plant in Bulgaria which was abandoned in 2012) were Greenpeace (in all countries), the Rainbow Coalition and the South Bohemian Mothers (in the Czech Republic) and the BeleNE! Coalition (in Bulgaria). These organizations had some success in grassroots actions. For example, South Bohemian Mothers won a lawsuit against the district authority of Ceske Budejovice for approving the construction of Temelin without an EIA and managed to defend itself against charges of harming the reputation of the owner of the plant the state-owned company CEZ xl. Similarly, during an interview with a Bulgarian antinuclear activist, he recalled that the government's decision to continue with the Belene project turned out to be based on a missing impact analysis document on handling and storage of the radioactive waste. The activist, after discovering that fact and following a request based on the Law for Access to Public Information, filed a court suit and the project was delayed with a couple of years until the Ministerial Council produced the missing document. NGO efforts were the most successful when they cooperated transnationally and when they were trying to involve the EU. Ondrej Cisar analyses the transnationally coordinated campaign against Temelin (involving Czech, Austrian and German organizations) and the role the EU played in the process. xli He finds that the opponents of the power plant saw the ongoing accession process as a unique opportunity to stop the plant s construction. He also concludes that the perceived significance of the EU explains the political strategies the anti-nuclear lobby used in order to persuade the Commission to make the Czech Republic s accession in the EU conditional upon discontinuing the building of Temelin. Towards Harmonizing EU Nuclear Safety Regulation? After examining how the EU has influenced the nuclear politics in the CEE countries, the article will now turn to the second part of the research question, namely how those developments have influenced EU level legislation and institutions and what the current state of EU nuclear regulation is. The Euratom Treaty of 1957 and European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law xlii constitute the legal basis for EU competency for nuclear safety standards. Despite this fact, before 2009 there was not a single piece of Community legislation regarding nuclear safety issues. That means that during the events described in this article there was no EU-level nuclear secondary legislation to govern the process. It was within the broader framework of EU environmental policy and the IAEA's Convention on Nuclear Safety that nuclear issues were tackled. However, the Convention does not have a binding character and EU environmental legislation does not explicitly deal with nuclear energy. It

10 was not until 2009 that the first piece of EU secondary legislation on nuclear issues came out Council Directive 2009/71/Euratom establishing a Community framework for the nuclear safety of nuclear installations. Two years later the second Directive dealing with nuclear issues was adopted Council Directive 2011/70/Euratom establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste. The question that necessarily comes up is what were the reasons for such a long absence of European secondary legislation? The literature on the issue is very thin but according to Berthelemy and Leveque xliii the main reason lies in the "variation of local risk aversion across the EU". The authors cite recent Eurobarometer reports indicating that support for nuclear power is extremely uneven in Europe only 11% of people in Cyprus think that the benefits of nuclear power outweigh the risks it poses as opposed to 59% in the Czech Republic. Local preferences regarding risks clearly vary but this is not the only reason why nuclear safety standards are not harmonized EU-wide. There is another, more significant factor for such absence of harmonization there are historical differences in the nuclear energy procedures and facilities of traditional nuclear member states such as France and the UK. Those countries have long traditions of nuclear energy production but their nuclear sectors have evolved differently, use different technology and are governed differently. During my interview with the former Commission head of unit, she emphasized that full harmonization is a next to impossible task because what is considered safe in one country might not be considered so in another. This is especially valid for safety practices in Western and Eastern Europe. Very often, what Eastern experts deemed satisfactory in terms of safety levels was not considered so by Western experts and this became obvious during the process of negotiations for the closure of the older generation Soviet-designed reactors. Thus, the member states were aware that full harmonisation attempts would open a Pandora's Box of regulatory debates. It is clear that from an economic (rational choice) point of view, there is no reason to impose a "one size fits all" set of nuclear safety standards. As one author puts it, "it is not irrational that in Europe a less safe NPP could have its life extended whereas a safer one is shut down" xliv. Nevertheless, the 2009 Directive on nuclear safety became a reality. According to my interviewee from the Commission, a lot of impetus for it came from Austria and other anti-nuclear member states in the aftermath of the difficult bargaining with the CEE member states. The concern of those states was so vocal and the politicization of the nuclear issue in CEE was so strong that the Commission initiated a series of proposals to harmonize nuclear safety rules. The enlargement process was one of the strongest stimuli for that decision. This view is shared by all my interviewees and is hinted at by existing literature on EU enlargement and the nuclear sector. xlv The mistrust of the West towards nuclear technology coming from the East was strong enough to make the Council adopt basic EU safety rules but a closer look at the Directive reveals that it is far from achieving full harmonization. Legal scholars argue that the nuclear safety directive was significantly watered down compared to the Commission's initial proposals. xlvi The Commission's idea was to establish legally binding nuclear safety standards with monitoring mechanisms, enforced by an EU-level regulatory committee to be chaired by the Commission. Instead, Directive 2009/71/Euratom essentially makes the voluntary IAEA's "Fundamental Safety Principles" binding for EU member states. But those principles are broad; they are not specific technical requirements because of the aforementioned differences between member states' nuclear technologies. Also, instead of the creation of a

11 supranational body overseeing standards, the legislation promoted the role of national safety authorities by requiring them to be fully independent. This provision seems specifically intended for the new member states of the Union, which have long had problems guaranteeing the independence of their nuclear safety authorities from political pressures. Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic do not possess France's or UK's experience of independent regulation of the nuclear sphere so this provision was intended to promote safety culture primarily in the CEE member states. The task to define EU nuclear safety standards was given to the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG). This institution was created in 2007 and comprises senior officials from all the member states' national regulatory authorities together with senior representatives from the European Commission. ENSREG's role is to serve as an expert body advising the Commission on nuclear safety issues. The other organization which was created as a discussion forum to develop a common approach to nuclear safety in Europe is the Western European Nuclear Regulators' Association (WENRA). WENRA was specifically created in 1999 to asses nuclear safety standards of the then accession countries. The members of WENRA are essentially the same as ENSREG's with the difference that non-eu nuclear countries can also join the organization (e.g. Switzerland). WENRA does not have a formal mandate within the EU but its assessments played a key role during the closing of the reactors in Bulgaria and Slovakia. WENRA members were visiting the nuclear power plants in the accession countries and were making recommendations on nuclear safety issues. The other and more recent driver of nuclear legislation harmonization was the Fukushima accident of March In the aftermath of the accident the Council decided that common stress tests will be performed in all the nuclear installations across the EU to assess their emergency preparedness in cases of natural disasters or man-made hazards (i.e. terrorist acts or plane crashes). The WENRA and ENSREG's expertise was used to devise the common methodology for the tests and they were performed between 2011 and Fukushima has had another influence on EU nuclear regulation there is currently a proposal being discussed in the Council to amend the nuclear safety directive. The major changes that the Commission proposed are the introduction of a European system of peer reviews of nuclear facilities, and an introduction of a requirement of specific safety reviews for older nuclear power plants for which a lifetime extension is considered. The new directive also aims to further strengthen the role and independence of national regulatory authorities and to increase transparency on nuclear safety matters. xlvii The peer review system is intended to be topical and would serve as a verification mechanism to ensure that common safety objectives are achieved at EU level. The introduction of topical peer reviews was inspired by the stress test process. The proposal also says that a peer review of one or more nuclear safety topics would be organised at least once every six years. The results of the peer review would then be translated into specific technical recommendations. The Commission's main role in the peer review process would be to select a topic if member states fail to do so and to launch a "verification mission" to be carried out by other member states if it identifies delays or deviations in the implementation of peer review recommendations. xlviii These measures are a further step towards harmonization of EU nuclear rules but they don't remain uncontested by the member states concerned about their national sovereignty. According to the former head of unit at the Commission, the process has been long, complex and heavily debated ("a fight about who will regulate") but the amendments to the

12 directive will most likely be adopted even if slightly watered down. Still, according to her "the current state of nuclear safety governance will most likely not change substantially". Conclusion The purpose of this article was to follow a very significant aspect of the development of the nuclear energy sector in many of the traditionally nuclear countries from the CEE region the conditionality to close down Soviet-designed reactors considered unsafe by Western European experts in order for those countries to become EU members. The influence of international funding bodies and the EU played a strong role in the shape of this sector nowadays. First of all, it triggered an influx of foreign companies working together with local ones on the upgrading of the old facilities. Had it not been for Western funding (coming from PHARE, EBRD or EIB) the CEE states might not have been able to secure the longer life of their reactors. That can be termed the "paradox of nuclear conditionality" instead of killing the nuclear sectors in those countries it kept them busy for at least a decade and a half. The CEE region was also discovered by Western companies as a big market for their products and services in times when nuclear energy in Europe and the United States is in stagnation. Once it became clear that Bulgaria and Slovakia had to close down a significant part of their nuclear capacity their governments decided to explore options for making up for the lost share of nuclear energy in the electricity mix. When public tenders were announced, French, American, German and Russian companies were immediately interested in participating. The Czech Republic still hasn't chosen a contractor for the construction of Temelin 3 and 4 and Bulgaria is currently "flirting" with Westinghouse for a 7 th block at Kozloduy after abandoning a Russian technology based project in Belene. Another effect of international pressure on the CEE nuclear industries has been that Western and Eastern European experts had to start working together and exchanged professional experience. Last but not least, anti-nuclear NGOs in the region had a chance to cooperate transnationally with their Western counterparts and saw new avenues for their lobbying efforts, namely the EU. But the influence ran also in the other direction the EU learned some lessons during the accession process and an impetus was provided for creating new legislation and new organizations (ENSREG and WENRA). The difficulties Europe had to "sell" the Western nuclear safety rules to the CEE accession countries and the tireless attempts of Austria and other anti-nuclear member states to Europeanize the issue led to the adoption of the first nuclear safety directive of the EU. Even though the legal basis for such secondary legislation exists since the creation of the Community with the Euratom treaty, it was not until 2009 that a nuclear safety directive entered into force. In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, this directive is in a revision process, the outcome of which will be seen in the near future. There will most likely be further increase of shared competence on nuclear safety but the fundamental problem of historically different nuclear "cultures" and technologies will pose an unsurmountable obstacle to fully Europeanizing the issue. i IAEA, International Assistance to Upgrade the Safety of Soviet-Designed Nuclear Power Plants: Selected Activities in Eastern and Central Europe and the Countries of the Former Soviet Union (Vienna: IAEA, 1993)

13 ii Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), Source Book: Soviet-Designed Nuclear Power Plants in Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Armenia, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria(Washington: NEI, 1996) iii "Aid Plan Drafted for Atomic Safety in Europe", New York Times (21 May 1992), p. 1 iv John Van Oudenaren, "The Limits of Conditionality: Nuclear reactor Safety in Central and Eastern Europe, ", International Politics 38 (December 2001), p. 474 v Ibid. vi Ibid. vii "Bulgaria can become the energycenter of the Balkans, PM says",dnevnik (6 February 2002), lkanite/ viii YanakiGanchev, quoted in Pari(16 October 1995) ix John Van Oudenaren, "The Limits of Conditionality: Nuclear reactor Safety in Central and Eastern Europe, ", International Politics Vol. 38 (December 2001), p. 475 x Ibid., p. 476 xi European Commission, 1999 Regular Report from the Commission on Bulgaria s Progress towards Accession, xii Sofia Seeks More Time for Closure, European Voice (8 April 1999), xiii Bulgaria is angry about the closure of Kozloduy units because of EU accession, Darik(27 December 2006), xiv IAEA, Ranking of safety issues for WWER-440 model 230 nuclear power plants (Vienna: IAEA, 1992) xv Van Oudenharen, p. 478 xvi Ibid. xvii Ibid. xviii Ibid. xix Areva, Areva's Nuclear Power Activities in Slovakia, xx RagnarLofstedt, "Are Renewables an Alternative to Nuclear Power? An Analysis of the Austria/Slovakia Discussions", Energy Policy Vol. 36 (2008), p xxi Ibid. xxii Regina Axelrod, "Nuclear Power and EU Enlargement: The Case of Temelin", Environmental Politics, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2004), pp xxiii Ibid. xxiv Ibid. xxv Kate Connolly, "Czechs Face Green Blockade Over New Nuclear Plant", Guardian (15 September 2000) xxvi Axelrod, p. 169 xxvii Ibid., p. 159 xxviii Ibid., p. 164 xxix "Austrian Officials Call Temelin's Temporary Shutdown 'A Chance'", Radio Free Europe (17 January 2001), xxx Czech News Agency (11 September 2001) xxxi Tony Kilick, "Principals, Agents and the Failings of Conditionality", Journal of International Development, Vol. 9, No. 4 (1997), pp xxxii Van Oudenaren (2001) xxxiii Jeffrey Checkel, Compliance and Consitionality, ARENA Working Papers WP 00/18, xxxiv Lukas Tichy, "The Czech Discourse on the Completion of the Temelin Nuclear Power Plant", International Issues and Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs, Issue (2012), pp xxxv Fico requests EU help after shutting down JaslovskéBohunice,Atlas, xxxvi "Fourth Day of Protest Against High Electricity Prices", Vesti.bg (13 February 2013), xxxvii European Commission (1999)

14 xxxviii Tichy (2012) xxxix Axelrod (2004), p. 165 xl Ibid. xli Ondrej Cisar, Internationalization of Social Movements in the Czech Republic: The Case of the Anti-Temelin Campaign, Polish Sociological Review No. 161 (2008), pp xlii ECJ, Judgement of the Court of 10 December 2002 Commission of the European Communities v Council of the European Union, Case C-29/99 (2002) xliii "Harmonising Nuclear Safety Regulation in the EU: Which Priority?", Intereconomics Vol. 3 (2011), pp xliv Ibid. xlv Axelrod (2004), Lofstedt (2008) xlvi Ana Stanic, "EU Law on Nuclear Safety", Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2010), pp xlvii European Commission, MEMO/13/539, (13 June 2013), xlviii Ibid.