The Financing of Nuclear Power Plants
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Research and Test Facilities Required in Nuclear Science and Technology
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Besoins d'installations de recherche et d'expérimentation en sciences et technologies nucléaires
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The Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities (CNRA) Senior-level Task Group on the Regulator's Role in Assessing Licensee Oversight of Vendor and Other Contracted Services convened its first meeting on 23-25 November in Paris. This task group of senior-level managers representing regulatory bodies from nine countries aims to produce a regulatory guidance booklet to reflect the contemporary challenges faced by regulatory bodies, notably to ensure nuclear safety in an environment that is increasingly utilising global contractors and subcontractors for the construction and operation of nuclear power plants.
The Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) workshop on Simulator Studies for Human Reliability Analysis Purposes was held in Budapest on 4-6 November. This workshop attracted some 30 participants from 10 member countries. The proceedings of the workshop are under preparation and will be issued in due course.
In November, the CSNI issued a report on Defence in Depth of Electrical Systems and Grid Interaction (DIDELSYS) which summarises the main findings and recommendations of the task group that was established in the aftermath of the 2006 Forsmark event. The group has studied and identified several electrical susceptibilities that warrant prompt attention for operating reactors and new reactors under design. The primary issues are related to electric power supply to safety-related equipment at nuclear power plants, and the commonly used approaches, assumptions and design standards for voltage protection of safety-related equipment.
The Working Party on Decommissioning and Dismantling (WPDD) has established new task groups on the management of large components from decommissioning and on future R&D and innovation needs for decommissioning. The large components group plans to produce a guidance document identifying the factors relevant to decisions to segment large components from decommissioning sites for storage and eventual disposal or recycling. The report will also address the regulatory approval process and public acceptance issues. The R&D group is aiming to define the elements of a decommissioning project which have the greatest potential for future improvement through R&D and/or innovation and to outline associated R&D projects which should be considered for future funding by governments or by the decommissioning industry.
The 19th annual Management Board meeting of the Information System on Occupational Exposure (ISOE) was held on 18-20 November at NEA offices. The meeting was chaired by the new ISOE Chairman, Mr. Vasile Simionov from the Cernavoda nuclear power plant (Romania). Following presentations on occupational dose trends and as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) activities at nuclear power plants in their countries, participants then discussed ISOE programme management topics. Important outcomes included the approval to launch a new web-based data entry system for the ISOE occupational exposure database on the ISOE website, to investigate possibilities of removing data access restrictions for national authorities participating in ISOE, and to pursue more formal co-operation with the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) on the routine provision of selected data from the ISOE database for use in UNSCEAR reports on global exposure trends. Participants also considered options for future activities aimed at better meeting ISOE end-user needs. ISOE website: www.isoe-network.net
The NEA hosted the 2nd meeting of the Working Party on International Nuclear Data Evaluation Co-operation (WPEC) Subgroup 33 on 24 November. This subgroup was established to study methods and issues for the combined use of integral experiments and nuclear data covariance. The objective of this collaborative effort is to recommend a set of best and consistent practices in order to reach the accuracy required to design an innovative future reactor. Participants at the meeting agreed on a list of integral experiments and nuclear data to be considered in the benchmark exercise, which will start in the first half of 2010. Preliminary results will be discussed at the next meeting in June 2010.
The NEA hosted the autumn meeting of the Joint Evaluated Fission and Fusion (JEFF) project on 25-27 November. The first two days were devoted to parallel sessions on fusion activities (EFF/EAF) and to the JEFF subgroups on Decay Data and Fission Yields, and Nuclear Data Measurements, Evaluation, Processing and Benchmarking. The last day was devoted to a joint session, where presentations of interest to both fission and fusion communities were discussed. The possibility of releasing an updated version of JEFF-3.1 for fission applications was discussed, as well as the preparation of a more ambitious beta test file as a first step towards the next major release, JEFF-3.2, which should respond to the needs of both fission and fusion applications.
Computer program services
New computer programs available
| 24-NOV-2009 | NEA-1697 | IFPE/HATAC R1, Fission Gas Release at High Burn-up, Effect of a Power Cycling (Arrived) |
| 19-NOV-2009 | NEA-1852 | GANDR/SEMOVE, Program for Calculating Derivatives of Processed Multigroup Nuclear Data by Discrete Differences (Tested) |
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