From November 26-28 the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety (VARANS) met with the Office of New Reactors (NRO) of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in their headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. Dr. Le Chi Dung, Deputy Director General, VARANS and Nguyen Quoc Anh, Director, Training Division, VARANS discussed NRC regulatory requirements, review processes and important issues as they pertained to licensing of new reactors in the United States. Dr. Richard Barrett and Scott Newberry of AdSTM attended the meeting and assisted in the discussions with respect to how the NRC licensing approach might be applicable to a newcomer regulatory authority like VARANS. NRO staff and management provided an overview of the licensing activities in every area in which they perform a regulatory review-from engineered safety features, to electric power, operational aspects, emergency planning, and decommissioning. Dr. Dung indicated that the information would be very important to VARANS in the development of their new reactor licensing framework in Vietnam.
