Nuclear Energy Agency To Sponsor An Extesive International
Nuclear Emergency Exercise In Hungary
On 3 November
1998, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD/NEA) will sponsor an extensive
international nuclear emergency exercise simulating an accident at the
Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary. The 32 countries participating from
Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and North America, will follow their
actual national emergency response plans and procedures, using their actual
emergency response centres. All relevant international and bilateral agreements
will be followed by participants.
This will be the
third in a series of international exercises (INEX 2), involving specific
Member country nuclear facilities. The previous exercises took place in
Switzerland, in the autumn of 1996, and in Finland in the spring of 1997.
The objective
is to assist participating countries to exercise their emergency response
programmes, specifically:
-to test the communications
systems that would be used in a real emergency for notification and exchange
of information;
-to test decision-making
on countermeasures in the early phase of an accident based on incomplete
or uncertain information; and
-to test the communication
of information to the public in nuclear emergency situations.
The accident exercise
at the Paks nuclear power plant, will involve a simulated release of radioactive
material. Actual weather conditions at the time of the simulated accident
will be used to predict the trajectory of the radioactive cloud as it
leaves the power station, and all participating countries will use their
national meteorological services, as well as the resources of the World
Meteorological Organisation, to predict the deposition or radioactive
materials. The Paks plant is a Russian designed VVER 440 nuclear reactor,
and the accident will be simulated at one of the four units at the site.
Some 47 VVER reactors operate at present in Central and Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union.
