The Working Group on Reactor Oversight (WGRO) works to provide a mechanism for nuclear safety regulators and Technical Support Organisations (TSOs) to share their knowledge and experience on both, the human and technical aspects of reactor oversight. 

The WGRO seeks to facilitate an active and timely exchange of commendable practices, as well as lessons learnt to help regulators perform their function more effectively and efficiently. 

The WGRO and any subsidiary bodies will focus on reactor oversight and analyse operating experience in order to promote consistency of regulatory practices.

The WGRO will focus on identifying and sharing relevant good practices in reactor oversight that provide the necessary assurances of day-to-day safe operation on nuclear power plants, with special attention to inspection.

The WGRO will also serve as a forum to share information on safety-related events and assessment of those events by the regulatory body, with the aim to evaluate operating experience to identify global trends, lessons learnt and to develop specific recommendations for regulators in the short to medium term.

The primary focus of the group will be on operating power reactors, but it will also include experiences from other phases of the reactor lifecycle as well. 

The WGRO will collect and analyse information so that it can share:

• best practices and methods to help regulatory bodies focus on areas of great safety significance; 
• information from important-to-safety operational events and inspection findings from all phases of the nuclear power lifecycle e.g. from the International Reporting System for Operating Experience (IRS) and other databases;
• methods, practices, and technologies to ensure that oversight is conducted in a manner that promotes new and established good practices;
• methods to integrate information collected from all oversight activities in order to make decisions in a technically-sound manner;
• information and experience related to inspection practices (e.g. planning, conducting, documenting) and programmes;
• methods to evaluate and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of inspections including the use of innovative technologies;
• methods to assess and/or rate the safety significance of inspection findings and results;
• improved techniques and methods to collect and evaluate national and international operational experience and use this information to provide regulators with recommendations such as re-assessment of safety, additional research, new or revised regulatory inspection practices, improvements in managing operations, and other actions to maintain and improve safety in the long term.