Assessing and Improving the Safety of Pressurized Water Reactors in Europe, with IAEA Support

Sharing expertise

Through workshops, training courses, fellowships and scientific visits, the project developed a more comprehensive understanding of the IAEA Safety Standards in more than 220 counterparts participating in the project, particularly as the Standards relate to the operation of PWRs. At all stages of these capacity building events, IAEA  experts underlined the Agency’s readiness to support the NPP safety- and design-related objectives of Member States, upon request through the  IAEA technical safety review (TSR) service on design safety and safety assessment.

Much of the capacity building efforts focussed on the implementation of probabilistic safety assessments. By integrating information related to plant design, operating practices, operating history, component reliability, human behaviour, accident phenomena, the PSA methodology facilitates the analysis of a nuclear power plant in its entirety, including its safety systems and installations.

“Thorough knowledge and understanding of safety assessment and design safety is an ultimate prerequisite to achieve a high level of safety throughout the lifetime of nuclear power plants,” said Vesselina Ranguelova, Head of the IAEA’s Safety Assessment Section. “An independent technical peer review, such as the IAEA TSR, is crucial to assure the quality of the assessments.”

Csilla Rudas, an assistant research fellow at the Radiation Protection Department of the Centre for Energy Research in Budapest, Hungary, was one of 226 experts and professionals to benefit from trainings organized through the project, and noted that her new skills have already helped advance her ongoing research and work to include Probabilistic Safety Assessment in Hungarian legislation.

“The insights and knowledge of the experts was crucial to my research,” said Rudas, adding that  “the knowledge sharing during the project has helped me, and other participants, to enhance nuclear safety in our respective countries.”

A leading specialist on thermal-hydraulic analysis of Nuclear and Radiation Safety Centre of Armenia, Hovhannes Hovhannisyan said, “The knowledge I gained from this project has already helped me to further assist the regulatory authority’s review of the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant’s safety assessments.”

[1] RER9144, ‘Building Capacity for Infrastructure Development and Safety Assessment of Water Cooled Water Moderated Power Reactor Technology with Advanced Safety Features: the Case of WWER/PWR’