International Nuclear Safety Mechanisms

Annick Carnino,
former director, Division of Nuclear Installation Safety

1. Inter-governmental legal instruments

A powerful mechanism for increasing safety worldwide is through the development and adoption of legally binding Conventions.

Three Conventions in the area of Nuclear, Radiation and Waste Safety are presently legally in force. They are:

Implementation measures: each contracting party shall take, within the framework of its national law, the legislative, regulatory and administrative measures and other steps necessary for implementing its obligations under this Convention. Moreover, each contracting parties shall submit for review prior to each review meeting, a National Report on the measures it has taken to implement each of the obligations of the Convention. Review meetings should be convened at intervals no greater than three years. The First Review Meeting has already been convened in April 1999 and was attended by 45 contracting parties. The next Review Meeting is scheduled for April 2002.

The contracting parties concluded that the review process had proven to be of great value to their national nuclear safety programmes, starting with the self-assessment involved in producing the national reports followed by the review of national reports by other contracting parties, with exchange of questions and comments, and finally the very open discussions at the Review Meeting. The review process thus truly provided learning through international co-operation.

A fourth Convention, The Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, was adopted at a Diplomatic Conference in September 1997, but is not yet in force.

Following the Chernobyl accident, the IAEA initiated work on all aspects of nuclear liability with a view to improving the basic Conventions on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage and establishing a comprehensive liability regime. In 1988, as a result of joint efforts by the IAEA and OECD/NEA, the Joint Protocol Relating to the Application of the Vienna Convention and the Paris Convention was adopted. The Joint Protocol established a link between the Conventions combining them into one expanded liability regime. Parties to the Joint Protocol are treated as though they were Parties to both Conventions and a choice of law rule is provided to determine which of the two Conventions should apply to the exclusion of the other in respect of the same incident.

2. Safety Standards of the IAEA

Under Article III.A.6 of its Statute, the Agency is authorized ‘to establish or adopt, in consultation and, where appropriate, in collaboration with the competent organs of the United Nations and with the specialized agencies concerned, standards of safety for protection of health and minimization of danger to life and property". Since soon after the Agency's inception the Secretariat has been involved in developing and establishing such standards.

In 1996, the Secretariat introduced a uniform preparation and review process for safety standards. To this end, it created a set of advisory bodies with harmonized terms of reference to assist it in preparing and reviewing all documents, namely the Advisory Commission for Safety Standards (ACSS), the Nuclear Safety Standards Advisory Committee (NUSSAC), the Radiation Safety Standards Advisory Committee (RASSAC), the Waste Safety Standards Advisory Committee (WASSAC) and the Transport Safety Standards Advisory Committee (TRANSSAC). It assigned to each of these bodies a Scientific Secretary, who co-ordinates the work of the body with the relevant Agency policies and programmes, and appoints a Technical Officer for the preparation of each document

The Safety Standards Series documents fall into three categories:

Safety Reports give examples and descriptions of methods which can be applied in implementing both Safety Requirements and Safety Guides. They are documents for fostering information exchange.

3. Safety Review Services of the IAEA

Since the early 1980s, the IAEA is providing safety services to nuclear power plants and research reactors. The provision of services is in line with IAEA’s statutory responsibilities of establishing safety standards and providing for the application of these standards at the request of its Member States.

In the last years, the scope of safety services have been expanded and new services have been established in response to specific needs of Member States. The following are the safety review services offered by the Agency.

International Regulatory Review Team (IRRT)

Inaugurated in 1989, the IRRT programme provides advice and assistance to Member States to strengthen and enhance the effectiveness of their nuclear safety regulatory body whilst recognizing the ultimate responsibility of each Member States for regulating nuclear safety.

Operational Safety Review Teams (OSART)

The purpose of the OSART programme, established in 1982, is to assist Member States in enhancing the operational safety of nuclear power plants and to promote the continuous development of operational safety within all Member States by the dissemination of information on good practices.

Engineering Safety Review Services (ESRS)

The ESRS, initiated in 1989, provides advice on selected engineering safety aspects of NPPs in construction or in operation. Areas of work include: siting, design, fire safety, and the impact of ageing in NPP safety. Specific services are:

Design Safety Review Services (DSRS)
Seismic Safety Review Service (SSRS)
Fire Safety Review Service (FSRS)
Ageing Management Advisory Team (AMAT)
Software Safety Review Service (SWSRS)

International Probabilistic Safety Assessments Review Team (IPSART)

IPSART (formerly IPERS) was established in 1988 to make international expertise available for reviewing probabilistic safety assessments (PSAs).

Peer Review of Operational Safety Performance Experience (PROSPER)

An IAEA operational safety service (derived from the former ASSET service) to peer-review self-assessments by NPPs of their operational safety performance and its trends based on operating experience.

Review of Accident Management Programmes (RAMP)

An IAEA service to assist the Member States in preparation, development and implementation of accident management programmes of their NPPs.

Safety Culture Enhancement Programme (SCEP)

A service intended to give support to senior utility managers on the enhancement of the management of safety and safety culture. It provides training to increase the understanding of safety culture issues, to perform a self-assessment and develop improvement initiatives.

Integrated Safety Assessment of Research Reactors (INSARR)

INSARR missions are an IAEA safety service offered, to assist Member States in ensuring and enhancing the safety of operating research reactors. Reviews are also conducted in accordance with provisions of agreements between the IAEA and some Member States.

International Nuclear Event Scale Information Service (INES)

INES is a scale to put incidents and accidents in nuclear power plants and other nuclear installations into perspective, explaining in simple terms their significance and relative importance to the public. The INES range is from level 1 (anomaly) through level 7 (major accident). Deviations of no safety significance are level 0.

Incident reporting and analysis (IRS)

The Incident Reporting System (IRS) is a mechanism to facilitate the exchange of information with regulators on events of safety significance at nuclear power plants and the lessons learned. The system is operated jointly by the IAEA and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency.

4. IAEA Assistance through Technical Co-operation projects and Extra-Budgetary Programmes

The Agency, pursuant to its Statute, helps Member States to comply with its safety standards through, inter alia, technical co-operation (TC) programmes. In doing so, it attaches high priority to the establishment and strengthening of nuclear, radiation and waste safety infrastructures in Member States.

Under its TC programmes, the Agency provides safety related technical assistance in the form of experts' services, equipment and training. The current safety related TC programme includes more than 130 national, regional and interregional projects of which about 35% are devoted to nuclear safety and 65% to radiation and waste safety. In addition, in 1998 about 60 national, regional and interregional workshops and training courses have been organized. The projects cover a very wide range of nuclear, radiation and waste safety issues, from the establishment of basic technical, legislative and regulatory infrastructure for the use of radiation and radioactive materials in medicine, research and/or industry to assistance in further strengthening the much more complex and sophisticated safety infrastructure needed for the development and operation of nuclear reactors.

Three complementary regional TC projects for Europe in particular are providing continuing assistance in important areas of safety of NPPs in Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union, through seminars, workshops, safety review missions and expert advice. These projects cover:

The systematic approach involves development , jointly by the Agency and the Member State, of a Country Nuclear Safety Profile (CNSP), describing the actual nuclear safety situation in the Member State; comparison of the actual situation in the Member State (as described in the CNSP) with a predefined 'reference situation' based on the Agency's Safety Requirements. This review, carried out jointly by the Agency and the Member State, aims to identify the areas where the actual situation falls short of the reference situation, and therefore where Agency assistance could most effectively be applied; and the formulation of an agreed Country Nuclear Safety Action Plan (CNSAP), based on the review findings, the Member State's priorities and the Agency's ability to provide suitable and effective assistance to the Member State.

As part of the implementation of the Strategy, the Agency is organizing a nine-week Basic Professional Training Courses, to meet the initial needs of trainees of graduate or equivalent level holding positions related to nuclear safety .

Since 1998 the IAEA is also implementing an extrabudgetary programme on the safety of nuclear installations in South East Asia, Pacific and Far East countries. The objective of the programme is to strengthen nuclear safety and to enhance the technical capabilities of regulatory authorities and supporting technical organizations. Participating countries are China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Focus is on providing assistance for:

The programme is also a mechanism for establishing a regional forum to exchange information to harmonize the implementation of nuclear safety concepts among countries in the region.

An Advisory Group meets annually and provides advice to the IAEA on programme implementation.

5. Pre-requisites for the development of a good nuclear power programme in terms of safety

The following indicate the prerequisites for a good safety programme, only some are given in full detail within the scope of this paper:

6. Conclusion : Safety Culture and management of safety

The principles of safety are now quite well known and are implemented worldwide. It leads to a situation where harmonization is being achieved as indicated by the entry into force of the Convention on Nuclear Safety. To go beyond the present nuclear safety levels, management of safety and safety culture will be the means for achieving progress.

Management of safety at the installations as well as its control and monitoring by the safety authorities become a key to the future of nuclear energy.

At utilities and nuclear installations operators, the first requirement for safety management is a commitment from the top management at both corporate and nuclear power plant (NPP) level. The second requirement is to develop the necessary work environment for developing a good safety culture through openness, communication, listening to staff problems and noticing on time the warnings indicating possible degradation of safety. The third requirement is a commitment to develop and maintain a good safety culture. The last requirement on operating organizations is to stay "humble": do not take for granted that the good level of safety will stay for ever, especially in the field of safety culture, keep a questioning attitude. Peer reviews are useful for this purpose.

Regulatory inspection and enforcement is an essential tool for monitoring the safety level at installations. Since more and more non-prescriptive regulatory approaches are now taken in the world, inspections also tend to depart from pure compliance to performance and/or process checking. Such an orientation certainly reinforces the prime responsibility of the operating organization in safety.

Peer reviews from external organizations or international ones represent also a good way for operators and for regulatory authorities to exchange experience and to further enhance the monitoring of safety in operating organizations.

As previously stated, to go beyond the present nuclear safety levels on existing installations, management of safety and safety culture will be the means for achieving progress. Future reactors have to demonstrate that their safety not only meet the current requirements but in fact go beyond the safety level presently accepted.

The Agency will continue to play its role by providing updated safety standards, safety review services and technical assistance to its Member States in order to maintain a worldwide high level of safety in nuclear installations.

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