(Repeats story from Monday)
* Austria calls for "stress tests" on EU nuclear plants
* Call comes as nuclear crisis unfolds in Japan
* Britain, France call for calm
By Pete Harrison and Marine Hass
BRUSSELS, March 14 (Reuters) - Austria on Monday called for
European nuclear power plants to face stress tests to reassure
people worried by the crisis in Japan while Britain and France
urged calm.
Nuclear power has been poised for a revival as Europe
strives to cut climate-warming carbon emissions and gas imports,
but public mistrust still runs high, with the Chernobyl accident
in 1986 still strong in many Europeans' minds.
Public confidence in the industry looked set to fall as
Japan scrambled on Monday to avert a meltdown at a stricken
nuclear plant, days after an earthquake and tsunami.
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The 27-member EU was already sharply divided, with France
seeking to export its nuclear expertise, but Austria strongly
opposed to any further expansion in its neighbourhood.
Nowhere is the issue more controversial than in Germany,
where demonstrators have taken to the streets after the
government extended the lifespan of Germany's 17 nuclear power
stations.
Germany is on the brink of suspending the unpopular
extension plan, government sources said on Monday.
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Austria's Nikolaus Berlakovich called for safety checks at a
meeting of environment ministers in Brussels on Monday.
"The people in Europe and Austria ask themselves how secure
are our reactors in Europe, around Austria," he told reporters.
"And that's why I will ask today in the meeting of ministers for
a stress test for European nuclear power stations."
"It must be quickly proven how earthquake-proof the nuclear
power stations are, how do the cooling systems work, what is the
reactors' protection. That must come quickly to reassure the
people."
Slovak Environment Minister Jozsef Nagy said he would
support a Europe-wide stress test for power plants and suggested
nations could be looking at a milestone in nuclear energy.
"If there would a European stress-test initiatve, I would
support that," Nagy said in Bratislava.
"I do not see this as a milestone in the energy sector, but
this might be a milestone in nuclear energy, so we will learn
and introduce technologies that are resilient to similar, or
even stronger, natural events."
Britain, which is planning up to 16 gigawatts of new nuclear
power, said it was difficult to draw parallels with Japan,
because Europe is not as geologically active.
"Safety comes number one," British secretary of state for
energy Chris Huhne told Reuters. "It's absolutely the first
priority and that's why I have asked our nuclear regulator to do
a report on the facts of the Japanese case, if there is anything
we can learn from the Japanese experience."
"Of course the difference with Japan is pretty dramatic," he
added. "The biggest earthquake that the UK has ever suffered was
back in 1931 and the Japanese earthquake, I am sorry to say, is
130,000 times stronger than the strongest ever recorded in the
UK."
The discussion came after EU energy commissioner Guenther
Oettinger called a meeting of EU nuclear experts to discuss the
situation on Tuesday.
French environment minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet also
stressed that Japan's nuclear crisis occurred in "very
exceptional circumstances".
"Those questions could only be asked on the basis of
experience, once we have all the information, once the crisis is
over," she told reporters in Brussels. "We shouldn't, at a
European level, fall in the indecency of an over-reaction while
the crisis in unveiling."
(Additional reporting by Martin Santa in Bratislava,
editing by Rex Merrifield and Jason Neely)
