Boosting their long-standing cooperation on innovative reactors which started in 2003, experts from the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) and the IAEA recently met to pave the way for a renewed framework and to identify additional areas collaboration, such as in safety, technology development, economics and proliferation resistance of next generation nuclear systems, as well as non-electric applications, education and training, and research and development infrastructure.
The 12th GIF-IAEA interface meeting, a mechanism to decide on key areas of collaboration between the two organizations, held on 26 and 27 March in Vienna, was immediately followed by the 7th IAEA-GIF workshop, which zoomed in on the safety of liquid metal cooled fast reactors, primarily on developing safety design criteria and safety design guidelines for these technologies.
“The GIF-IAEA interface meeting is an excellent opportunity to exchange information on next generation reactor development activities and to review the status of cooperation between the GIF and the IAEA,” said Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy. “It enables discussion and possible cooperation in several cross-cutting areas, such as the future energy market.”
He added that this dialogue creates an important link between the IAEA’s diverse efforts to support Member States and an important international research and development (R&D) collaboration among several leading nuclear technology nations.
Past interface meetings had focused on the synergies between IAEA’s International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO) and GIF. However, as more collaboration options have been identified, this series of meetings now encompasses activities from other IAEA programmes and projects as well.
“We need institutional innovations worldwide so as to share international safety standards with the objective to have a stable, unified licensing process,” said François Storrer, GIF’s Policy Director. “The work of a dedicated GIF Task Force to define safety design criteria and guidelines for the design of next generation sodium cooled fast reactors (SFRs) represents an important first step towards helping regulators become familiar with the technical characteristics of Gen-IV systems and the associated safety research.”
We need institutional innovations worldwide so as to share international safety standards with the objective to have a stable, unified licensing process.
