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New entrants
On 26-27 June 2012, the NEA facilitated a mission
with the IAEA Regulatory Cooperation Forum (RCF)
to meet with government officials in Vietnam. The
purpose of the mission was to discuss international
requirements, experiences and best practices for
regulatory bodies that Vietnam may consider as
it moves forward with planned enhancements to
Vietnam’s Atomic Law that would clarify the authorities,
roles and responsibilities within the governmental
structure for regulatory oversight as Vietnam
embarks on its new nuclear power programme.
Meetings were held with the Deputy Prime
Minister of Vietnam and senior government officials
from the seven ministries with regulatory responsibilities
for nuclear power. During these meetings, the
mission participants shared their insights on regulatory
independence and technical and regulatory
competencies within their own frameworks.
Regulatory inspection practices
The Working Group on Inspection Practices (WGIP)
continued its efforts on the inspection of licensee
maintenance programmes and licensee emergency
arrangements. The 11 th WGIP workshop was
hosted by ENSI, the Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety
Inspectorate, in Baden, Switzerland, on 21-25 May
2012. The workshop addressed inspection of ageing
and equipment qualification, inspection of operator
competency and inspection of licensee’s oversight
of contractors. As typical of a WGIP workshop, preworkshop
questionnaires were completed by countries
and the lead working group member prepared
a presentation to open the discussions. Preparations
were made for the 12 th WGIP workshop, which is
to be hosted by the US NRC in spring 2014. Topics
will include inspection of licensee’s outage activities,
with a subtopic on inspection of licensee’s fire
protection programmes, event response inspections
and post-Fukushima inspections.
Nuclear regulators and public
communication
The activities of the Working Group on Public
Communication of Nuclear Regulatory Organisations
(WGPC) focused on crisis communication, which
is needed whenever a nuclear event has a media
impact. Based on a survey of practices in member
countries, a roadmap for crisis communication of
nuclear regulatory organisations (NRO) was established
early 2011 describing the main aspects to
be addressed before, during and after a crisis. The
roadmap was assessed by NRO communicators in
member countries after the Fukushima Daiichi accident
and was found to be relevant in cases where
the major impact of the event remained within the
country. It was also found, however, that the international
dimension for cases of wider impact needed
further development. In this respect, a new survey
was prepared and a workshop bringing together
senior regulators, NRO communicators and stakeholders
(politicians, media, NGOs and industry) was
convened on 9-10 May 2012 in Madrid and addressed
the specific needs of crisis communication in the
international dimension. The workshop attracted
170 participants from 32 countries; proceedings are
in preparation. Other areas of WGPC work include
the use of social media and the development of communication
plans.
Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI)
The CSNI contributes to maintaining a high level of safety performance and safety competence
by identifying emerging safety issues through the analysis of accidents and their management,
ageing and structural integrity, fuel and fuel cycle safety, contributors to risk and human factors.
The committee also facilitates the establishment of international joint research projects when useful.
Highlights
• CSNI activities focused on continued follow-up to the Fukushima Daiichi accident. The committee
and its working groups discussed possible new technical tasks to respond to some of the
preliminary lessons learnt and closely co-operated with the CNRA and the CRPPH in a crosscommittee
integrated response to the accident.
• In total, eight new tasks were approved in 2012 to address one or more technical lessons learnt
from the Fukushima Daiichi accident.
• At the end of 2012, a total of 17 international joint research and 4 database projects were ongoing.
Analysis and management of accidents
The activities of the Working Group on Analysis and
Management of Accidents (WGAMA) have focused
on the thermal-hydraulics of the reactor coolant
system; in-vessel behaviour of degraded cores;
containment behaviour and protection; computational
fluid dynamics (CFD); and fission product
release, transport, deposition and retention.
During 2012, further progress was made on bestestimate
methods and uncertainty evaluations with
a new benchmarking activity (Post-BEMUSE Reflood
Input Uncertainty Methods) launched on quantifying
the uncertainty of the physical models in system
thermal-hydraulic computer codes which will
include five phases. Meetings related to Phases I and II
took place in February and June 2012 respectively.
NEA Annual Report 2012
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