For over 65 years, the NEA has served as a platform for multinational research co-operation, particularly in areas related to nuclear safety. The projects conducted under the NEA auspices have enabled nuclear safety regulators, technical support organisations, the nuclear industry and research organisations to share research costs and results and develop expertise. The safety research projects include experiments that address a particular safety issue and close a knowledge gap; creating and maintaining shared event, system and component databases that can be used to identify operational issues and good practices; or benchmarking safety models.
In 2023 the NEA held a Nuclear Safety Research Joint Projects Week to review the accomplishments of NEA Joint Nuclear Safety Projects over the last four decades and to discuss future perspectives. Through a series of webinars, leaders in the sector and research project operators discussed the outcomes of close to 50 nuclear safety projects and examined how the established frameworks, research platforms and networks could effectively support future developments in nuclear energy.