A "Regional Meeting on the Status of National Regulatory Infrastructures for Safety in Asia and the Pacific" was held in Hanoi, Vietnam, 20 - 24 April 2015. The meeting was held within the framework of the IAEA's regional technical cooperation (TC) project RAS/9/062, 'Promoting and Maintaining Regulatory Infrastructures for the Control of Radiation Sources.'
The main purpose of the meeting was to review the progress in establishing and strengthening their national regulatory infrastructure for radiation safety. The meeting also provided an opportunity to discuss the challenges faced in each participating country, and share regulatory knowledge and experience. Participants discussed the project impact on improving their national regulatory infrastructures and agreed on the remaining project activities as well as identifying the needs to be addressed in order to better address common challenges and expedite the process of establishing, improving and strengthening the national regulatory infrastructures for the control of radiation sources. In that context, time was allowed to reviewing the draft design of a regional TC project proposed to deal with these issues in the cycle of 2016-2017. The follow-up project aims to offer special attention to those with less developed regulatory infrastructures while relying on more developed ones as resource
During the practical session on the IAEA Radiation Safety Management Information System (RASIMS), participants were able to update their national profiles in the Thematic Safety Area 1 - Regulatory Infrastructure under supervision of IAEA staff
Altogether the meeting was attended by 15 participants from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Iraq, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and from the Territories Under the Jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority.
"This meeting was of great help to me, because I got to understand about Thematic Safety Area 1 and the related IAEA requirements; I learnt how to update our profile in the RASIMS, and I gained lots of experience from other colleagues of different Member States" commented one meeting participant on the last day of the event.
The meeting was funded by the European Union (EU). RAS/9/062 is one of the five TC safety-related projects in Asia and the Pacific supported by the EU as part of a larger European Union initiative to enhance nuclear safety around the world. The EU supports IAEA technical cooperation activities through the Nuclear Safety Cooperation Instrument.
| Project RAS/9/062 is being carried out with funding by the European Union and the IAEA. |
