The ENSI Board mourns Karine Rausis. She passed away at the beginning of January 2016. Karine Rausis had been a member of the independent supervisory body of the nuclear supervisory authority ENSI since the beginning of 2014.
The Federal Council confirmed the current ENSI Board members for the 2016 to 2019 term and appointed Monica Duca Widmer as a new member to the board. She will succeed Hans Pfeiffer, who is retiring from the board at the end of 2015.
Axpo submitted today a project plan (road map) to ENSI, the Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate, outlining procedures for the characterisation and evaluation of the indications in the base material of the Beznau 1 reactor pressure vessel. ENSI will review this plan in collaboration with a group of international experts.
A large majority of the Contracting Parties to the Convention on Nuclear Safety have elected ENSI Deputy Director Georg Schwarz to be Vice-President of the 7th Review Meeting of the Convention. This will be held in spring 2017 in Vienna.
At the 59th General Conference of the IAEA the representatives of the member states held discussions about various topics in the field of nuclear energy. The Swiss delegation with its representatives emphasised the international strengthening of nuclear safety.
The ENSI and the CNSC have signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The agreement is intended to strengthen their collaboration and enhance the exchange of information between the two countries in nuclear regulatory matters.
The Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate (ENSI) requires the Beznau nuclear power plant to provide proof that the reactor pressure vessel is safe. In an interview, Georg Schwarz, the Director of the Division for Nuclear Power Plants and Deputy Director of the ENSI, explains the importance of carrying out an ultrasonic examination.
The operator Axpo was able to plausibly demonstrate to the ENSI that even if one were to assume that the reactor pressure vessel of Beznau 2 had similar material defects to those in Beznau 1, the safety operation of the reactor pressure vessel is still sufficiently guaranteed.
While carrying out ultrasonic measurements of the reactor pressure vessel of the Beznau 1 nuclear power plant the operator detected flaw indications that require evaluation. It submitted a corresponding report to the Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate ENSI yesterday.
