The European Commission plans to propose updated EU nuclear safety rules in May, EU energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger said late Tuesday.
"In May we want to make a proposal for reactor safety, including for far- reaching independence of [nuclear] supervisory bodies," Oettinger told the European Parliament's energy committee.
The EU's first directive on nuclear safety was only adopted in June 2009, and EU countries had until July 2011 to transpose it into national law.
But the tidal-wave induced accident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant in March 2011 prompted the European Commission to propose and coordinate common EU-agreed safety "stress tests" for all EU nuclear reactors.
The EC released the results of these tests in October 2012, saying they showed generally high safety standards but that some specific areas, for example related to earthquake risks, needed to be improved.
