A Construction Permit Workshop was conducted with VARANS, the nuclear regulator in Vietnam, by Gene Imbro, Weidong He, and Scott Newberry of the AdSTM staff from February 14-18, 2011. Mark Lesser, NRC Region 2 participated as well.
The first day of the workshop focused on Licensing Process and Review Methodology. The remainder of the workshop covered the major elements of the CP review. Considerable discussion focused on the management of the regulatory review and how to credit the review of the Country of Origin (COO), achieving maximum efficiency. Availability of information, decision criteria, and interface between the nuclear island and the site were discussed.
Workshop participants asked many questions on the role of PSA in the overall safety assessment and its relationship to the deterministic analysis. Other areas discussed included safety classification, regulatory expectations for key safety systems, quality assurance, and construction inspection. VARANS shared the status of their activities including interface with the Russians on the VVER design, and the development of regulatory requirements and procedures.
Potential areas for followup from this workshop were identified and will be discussed with VARANS and the NRC. Potential followup activities include support for regulation development, an additional workshop on CP review, PSA fundamentals training, and the CP review management/prioritization.
Mark Lesser addressed the group on several important areas of inspection. These included the potential applicability of NRC approaches that could be applicable to a small country. On request of VARANS he also went through the general role and challenges of inspection, with actual examples. His participation enhanced the workshop.