IAEA 6th INPRO Forum on Licensing and Safety Issues for SMRs - 29 July - August 2, 2013

The subject of the 6th INPRO (International Project on Innovative Reactors and Fuel Cycles) Dialogue Forum organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna from July 29th to August 2nd 2013 was Licensing and Safety Issues for Small and Medium-Sized Reactors, (SMRs) one of this blog's favorite topics. (The 3rd INPRO Dialogue Forum, held 14-18 November 2011, was also on SMRs, with the title "Common User Considerations for Small and Medium-sized Nuclear Power Reactors").

Dr. David Newland of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was the Program Chair, with Poong-Eil Juhn of the Republic of Korea as Co-Chair. After an Opening and Introductory session, the second Session was on Experiences and Preparation for SMR Deployment, in which 8 Member States (MSs) of the IAEA - in alphabetical order: Canada, China, France, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA presented the status of their national licensing and safety programs for SMR licensing. There were two presentations from the USA - one each from the Department of Energy (USDOE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC).

This was followed by a Panel Discussion on Licensing and Safety Issues for SMRs (with Dr. David Newland of Canada, R. Seban of France, M. Ricotti of Italy, S-H Rhee of Korea, and I. Bylov of the Russian Federation as panelists). The conferees then broke out into 5 groups whose topics the organizers had circulated beforehand: (1) Designs; (2) Siting ; (3) Graded Approach in regulatory and licensing process; (4) Legal (5) Public Participation, each of which was briefed by their Group Leader in Session 3, prior to breakout. Session 4 was devoted to presentations from International Organizations: ASME, OECD-NEA, WENRA, and WNA.

In Session 5, the Group Leaders of the Breakout Sessions reported back (1. Soderholm, 2. deVos, 3. Ramakrishna  and 4. Magruder), and Session 6 concluded with reports from:  Mr. M.H. Subki of the IAEA on the questionnaire distributed to participants, Dr. Daniel Ingersoll on a summary of the plenary sessions; a Meeting Summary by the Program Chair Dr. David Newland; and a final word each from Z. Drace of INPRO and J.K. Park of the NENP/IAEA.

The final report on the 6th INPRO Dialogue Forum on Licensing and Safety Issues for SMRs is available here.

(The IAEA also held a Technical Meeting on SMR Technology Development for Near-Term Deployment in Chengdu, China - September 2-4, 2013, and a Technical Meeting on Instrumentation & Control in Advanced SMRs, 21-24 May 2013.)

 

American Nuclear Society Annual Meeting - ANS 2010

The American Nuclear Society (ANS) will hold its 2010 Annual Meeting in San Diego later this month (June 13-17 2010). It will likely be the world's largest conference of nuclear science and technology professionals, and its packed program is breathtaking in the scope, breadth and depth of coverage it provides of the hottest current topics in nuclear science, technology and policy.

I will simply indicate a few of what I consider very interesting sessions and add a comment or two by way of context. As can be expected, most of these are in areas of my research or consulting interest.

First, the Conference will include an Embedded Topical Meeting on the Safety and Management of Nuclear Hydrogen Production, Control and Management - the second such (the first having been held at ANS 2007). Among other interesting papers in this session is one on Probabilistic Safety Analysis of a hydrogen production plant using the Sulphur-Iodine process, with process heat derived from a High Temperature Test Reactor by a Korean group. This directly relates to topics I have discussed in my earlier papers: Safety Issues in Nuclear Hydrogen Production with with the Very High Temperature Reactor and Nuclear Hydrogen Production: Scoping the Safety Issues.

Secondly, the Conference will include a Session on Key Licensing and Regulatory Issues for Small and Medium Reactors, followed by a panel discussion with panelists from INL and the US NRC - I have discussed this topic earlier in other blog posts, and its importance can scarcely be over-emphasized. A group from GE will be discussing the licensing strategy for the PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module) liquid sodium-cooled reactor, while a group from KAERI (Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute) will discuss the SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced Reactor) - a water-cooled reactor with integral steam generators that is designed for power (about 100 MWe per module), seawater desalination, and process heat applications. A separate session on Safety Analysis and Licensing of non-LWR Reactor Concepts, should similarly be of strong interest - discussing gas-cooled and liquid-sodium cooled reactors from both an experimental and simulation perspective.

A related session will cover the Thermal Hydraulics of the VHTR (gas-cooled variant), relevant in the context of the licensing of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant. This session will cover ongoing experimental and computational/simulation of VHTR thermalhydraulics at the Oregon State University and INL - particularly on Loss of Flow and Pressurized Conduction Cooldown events in High temperature Reactors. The important issue of scaling - the ability to draw numerical comparisons and conclusions that are valid for real reactors from experiments and simulations done on smaller systems - will be the topic of a paper from Oregon State that should be of particular interest.

The issue of Scaling Methods will also be the topic of a special Tutorial Session, to be conducted by Dr. Pradip Saha of GE and Prof. Jose Reyes of Oregon State - that will discuss issues of scaling particularly with reference to LWRs - methods of dimensional analysis, method of similitude and normalization of governing equations will be discussed.

The topic of Nuclear Fuel and Structural Materials for Next Generation Nuclear Reactors will be the focus of another Embedded Topical Meeting, a topic I have worked on and discussed in several earlier papers and presentations (and blog posts: here, here and here).

I need hardly add that the Conference promises to be extremely interesting indeed!

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulatory Information Conference NRC-RIC-2010

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will be holding its annual Regulatory Information Conference (NRC-RIC) from March 9 to March 11, 2010. The conference will bring together a variety of stakeholders in the nuclear sector with regulators and technical specialists, both from the NRC and from US national laboratories. While most attendees will be from within the US, there will also be a large number of attendees from other countries, including Canada, who will share their own experiences and provide their own insights into nuclear regulatory affairs.

Apart from plenary sessions addressed by NRC Chairman and Commissioners, there will also be technical sessions on a number of cutting-edge issues at the interface of regulation and technology. These include a session on Materials Degradation at the Containment and Reactor Coolant System Pressure Boundary [Audio], which will discuss probabilistic analysis tools for carrying out the assessment of materials degradation at the pressure boundary, incorporating insights from investigations of the Pressurized Thermal Shock phenomenon. This is expected to contribute, for example, to better understanding of the probability of leak before rupture of piping systems. There are also at least two technical sessions on international issues: one on International Coordination between countries pursuing New Nuclear Power, another on International Cooperation on New Reactors [including the activities of the Multinational Design Evaluation Program (MDEP)]. Another session is devoted to discussing regulatory applications of International Experience in Operating Nuclear Reactors.

A technical session on Regulatory and Policy Issues for Small Modular Reactors should prove particularly interesting - since there is now great interest in the possibility of constructing small and modular reactors (including for isotope production; research; and local, off-grid power or heat applications). [Audio of event].

A separate session discussing the interest in Small and Modular Reactors will also be held [Audio].There will also be a session devoted to new developments in Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) for nuclear power plants, including a talk on peer review of the US NRC's SPAR (Standardized Plant Analysis Risk) model. [Audio]

There is also a session on technical, policy and R&D issues related to the licensing of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP), a gas-cooled reactor currently under development. [Session; Audio]. This includes a talk on the US NRC's efforts to develop an evaluation model(EM) for the NGNP. Other sessions of interest include a poster session on Central and Eastern US Seismic Source Characterization (SSC) model development, which may have implications for characterizing seismic sources in Canada as well.

Overall, the conferences promises to be quite interesting indeed.

Update: The US NRC published a Commission Paper (SECY-10-0034) on Potential Policy, Licensing, and Key Technical Issues for Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Designs on 3-28-2010.