IRDP / IAEA Meeting on Fukushima Lessons Learned

October 29th, 2013 — 

Between October 21 and 24, 2013, the NRC’s IRDP supported an IAEA meeting in Vienna, Austria to assess whether IAEA Safety Guide SSG-16, “Establishing the Safety Infrastructure for a Nuclear Power Programme ,” should be updated based on Fukushima lessons learned. SSG-16 contains 200 Action Items, and associated explanatory text, to help newcomer countries build the necessary safety infrastructure. IAEA Safety Guide SSG-16 is based on IAEA safety requirements and covers the first 3 phases of infrastructure development (i.e., decision-in-principle to proceed with the development of a nuclear power program through nuclear power plant commissioning). Each of the 200 Action Items is the responsibility of one or more of the following three groups: government/legislators, regulatory body, and/or operating organization. In order to determine whether SSG-16 should be updated, meeting attendees evaluated 1) proposed revisions to IAEA requirements (e.g., GSR Part 1, NS-R-3, SSR-2/1, SSR-2/2) and 2) various thematic IAEA lessons-learned reports. The meeting attendees determined that SSG-16 should be revised. Most of the proposed Fukushima-related changes to SSG-16 related to the areas of Safety Assessment, Emergency Preparedness and Response, Site Survey and Site Evaluation, and Design Safety. If the IAEA approves revising SSG-16 the revision could be issued by late 2015.