Nuclear Energy Agency Online Bulletin

Covers new material for April 2003

New publications
Nuclear safety
Radioactive waste management
Radiological protection
Data Bank

New publications

The Regulatory Challenges of Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors
ISBN 92-64-02120-5. 32 pages (154 kb).

Disponible également en français :
Les autorités de sûreté face au démantèlement des réacteurs nucléaires
ISBN 92-64-02121-3. 32 pages (205 ko).



Nuclear safety

The NEA Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) will sponsor a Workshop on Debris Impact on Emergency Coolant Recirculation on 25 February- 2 March 2004 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. The meeting will be organised in two parts: a restricted part reserved for regulatory organisations, their technical support organisations and national laboratories will be held on 25-27 February 2004; an open part accessible to nuclear power plant owners, operators, designers and vendors, industry associations, national laboratories and public interest representatives will be held on 1-2 March 2004. Active participation by utilities in the workshop's open part is strongly encouraged..

The CSNI Working Group on Analysis and Management of Accidents (GAMA) met on 10-11 April 2003 in Paris to review the progress of its activities in the following areas: thermal-hydraulics (reactor coolant system and related safety and auxiliary systems); in-vessel behaviour of degraded cores; fission products, ex-vessel phenomena; containment behaviour; integral experiments; severe accident analysis; accident management; and nuclear safety research facilities and programmes. It also discussed future activities in these fields and those of debris impact on emergency coolant recirculation (strainer clogging), advanced reactor safety research work and power plant uprates. The next meeting of the group will be on 29-30 September 2003.

The OECD Bubbler Condenser project has been successfully completed. The project's aims were to: produce convincing evidence for the proper functioning of the VVER-440/213 bubbler condenser during a design-basis accident (DBA); help in the planning and interpretation of new tests; and provide results for tool validation. Based on the tests performed at the Electrogorsk Research Center (EREC) in Russia, the project's steering group concluded that the related loads during DBAs do not represent a challenge to the design's confinement integrity. Czech, Hungarian and Slovak utilities provided the financing for the test programme. The final activity report "Answers to Remaining Questions on Bubbler Condenser" NEA/CSNI/R(2003)12 is now available at www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/2003/csni-r2003-12.pdf . More information about the OECD Bubbler Condenser project is available at www.oecd-nea.org/jointproj/bubbler.html .

Related links

Documents from the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI)
Documents from the Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities (CNRA)
Forthcoming workshops and seminars


Radioactive waste management

The NEA is co-sponsoring the conference "Decommissioning Challenges:
an Industrial Reality?" to be held on 23-27 November 2003 in Avignon, France. The conference is being organised by the French Nuclear Energy Society's waste management and decommissioning technical section. More information is available at www.sfen.fr/avignon2003/ .


Radiological protection

The second joint NEA/International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Forum "The Future Policy for Radiological Protection: A Stakeholder Dialogue on the Implications of the ICRP Proposals" took place on 2-4 April 2003 in Lanzarote, Spain. Taking part in the forum were representatives from the nuclear industry, academia and environmental NGOs, along with policy makers and regulators. In preparation for the forum, the NEA Expert Group on the Implications of ICRP Recommendations (EGIR) undertook an extensive analysis of the draft recommendation framework document that the ICRP published in 2002. At the forum, the conclusions of that analysis - which had already received wide endorsement - received further support. As a result, the ICRP has agreed to modify its framework approach. Some key aspects of the current system of radiological protection, which the ICRP had initially felt were not needed in the new system, will now be kept. These concepts include annual dose limits, keeping the radiation exposure concept and term "as low as reasonably achievable" (ALARA) and the use of group dose in optimising radiological protection. The forum was hosted by the Spanish Nuclear Safety Commission. More information about the EGIR is available at www.oecd-nea.org/rp/egir.html .


Data Bank

Computer program services

A page listing all new programs in the last 12 months can be found at: www.oecd-nea.org/tools/abstract/new.

  24-APR-2003 CSNI0075 SPES/SP-FW-02, Total Loss Feedwater with Emergency Feed Water Delayed in SPES facility (Report only)
  24-APR-2003 NEA-1641 SONATINA, Predicts Behaviour of Prismatic HTGR Core under Seismic Excitation (Now tested)
  23-APR-2003 NEA-1685 IFPE/IFA-597.3, centre-line temperature, fission gas release and clad elongation at high burn-up (60-62 MWd/kg) (Arrived)
  18-APR-2003 IAEA1399 ZZ-TH-N-CAPTURE-RI&G, Thermal Neutron Capture Cross Sections Resonance Integrals and G-Factors (Arrived)
  16-APR-2003 NEA-1687 IRPHE/B&W-SS-LATTICE, Spectral Shift Reactor Lattice Experiments (Now tested)
  16-APR-2003 NEA-1648 IFPE/TRANS-RAMP, Fuel behaviour data from PWR/BWR TRANS-RAMP I, II, IV experiments (Arrived)
  14-APR-2003 NEA-1553 SINBAD FUSION, Neutronics Benchmark Experiments (Now tested)
  09-APR-2003 IAEA1395 XNWLUP2.0, Graphical user interface to plot WIMS-D library multigroup cross sections (Now tested)

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