§ Lord Jenkins of Putneyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether there is any threat to south-east England from ageing nuclear reactors located near the northern coast of France.
§ Viscount UllswaterThe possibility of an accident at a French nuclear power station of sufficient severity to threaten the population of the South East of England has been assessed by the French authorities as extremely remote.
There are continuing contacts between my officials and those of the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) and their French counterparts. The NII has an "Exchange of Information" arrangement with the French nuclear safety regulatory body— Service Central de Sureté des Installations Nuclé aires (SCSIN) — which includes the exchange of safety-related information.
On the basis of these exchanges the NII see no reason to doubt the French assessment or to suppose that the standards of safety adopted by the French are any less rigorous than those applied in the United Kingdom.
Nonetheless, arrangements already exist, under a bilateral treaty with the French Government, for Her Majesty's Government to be notified of any accidental release of radioactivity from a French nuclear installation which may affect the United Kingdom. In addition, the French Government is a party to the early international notification arrangements established by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the European Community.
An independent means of detecting and monitoring any abnormal increases in environmental radioactivity of the kind which might stem from an overseas nuclear accident is provided by the Radioactive Incident Monitoring Network (RIMNET).