National Atomic Energy Agency

In addition to the President of the PAA, the parties to the agreement are also: the Head of the Internal Security Agency, the President of the Office of Technical Inspection, the Chief Inspector of Environmental Protection, the Chief Sanitary Inspector, the Chief Inspector of Building Inspection, the Chief Commandant of the State Fire Service and the Chief Labour Inspector. The agreement will allow these authorities to interact more closely with each other and coordinate their activities in the field of control and supervision of the activities of nuclear facilities.

- This will result in an increase in the level of nuclear safety and radiation protection of the country – emphasizes Andrzej Głowacki, President of the PAA.

In accordance with the provisions of the Atomic Law (Article 66(3) of the Act), entities that are authorised to inspect nuclear facilities should coordinate their activities. The agreement is therefore a practical implementation of these provisions. The point is that individual state administration bodies inspecting nuclear facilities should inform each other in various aspects about their actions, their results, decisions made or the detection of possible irregularities.

The agreement sets out, among other things, the possibilities of cooperation – in some cases, joint inspections will be possible, but also the rules of communication between the institutions, the exchange of information on planned inspections of nuclear facilities, the results of inspections, detected irregularities and actions taken in this regard.

The aim is to ensure the highest possible level of nuclear safety and radiation protection at all nuclear facilities.

In practice, the Agreement will operate in such a way that the President of the PAA will inform other authorities that have signed the agreement about planned and conducted inspections, and at the same time will receive similar information from them.

In the light of the provisions of the agreement, other authorities will not only inform the President of the PAA about their planned inspections and their results but also the President of the PAA will have the possibility to appoint teams when required by specific inspection issues or cooperate with other bodies in inspections or possible legislative actions.

Closer cooperation and the desire for greater coordination of activities between the authorities supervising nuclear facilities results from the priority that is given to safety in the context of plans to build nuclear power plants in Poland.