In June 2018, 14 young regulatory professionals from Latin America and the Caribbean completed the IAEA’s first regional training course in safety and security for junior regulatory staff.
It is important that young regulators have more opportunities for the development of their competence,” said Ana Maria Larcher, First Vice President at Argentina’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority (ARN), which hosted the 16 April to 8 June 2018 regional course.
The course participants, regulatory staff with less than two years’ regulatory experience from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador and Guatemala, learned about safety of radiation sources and security of radioactive material during the eight-week course.
The course highlighted how to implement the IAEA Safety Standards, the Nuclear Security Series, and the Code of Conduct on Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources and its supplementary guidance documents.
The course included more than 200 hours of teaching, including lectures, group discussions, inspection simulations and field visits to industrial, medical and research facilities that use radioactive material.
Senior regulators and experts also taught participants the responsibilities and functions of a nuclear regulatory body. This knowledge will help countries in the region establish or strengthen their national regulatory framework for radiation safety and nuclear security.
“Courses on nuclear security are rare in our region, and the topic of physical protection was new for most of the participants,” said Ana Molinari, head of ARN’s training unit, about the importance of the combined safety-security training in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The pilot course was the first IAEA educational initiative to combine regulatory safety and security aspects under the Regulatory Development Infrastructure Project (RIDP).
