Context of the workshop

Since its inception, the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has served as a flexible and powerful platform for multinational research co-operation, particularly in areas related to nuclear safety. The projects conducted under the NEA’s auspices have for decades enabled nuclear safety regulators, industry and research organizations to share research costs and results. That, in turn, has supported safety regulations and practices and facilitated their harmonisation around the world.

The NEA held the Nuclear Safety Research Joint Projects Week: Success Stories and Opportunities for Future Development from 9 to 13 January 2023 to review the accomplishments of the Joint Nuclear Safety Projects over the last four decades and to discuss future perspectives. A key point of the event’s discussions was related to the challenges ahead, particularly for safety research for accident management in operating and future reactors with:

• The need to maintain, thirteen years after the Fukushima-Daiichi accident, international interest as well as public and private support for related research to address identified knowledge gaps and to benefit from enhanced use of insights gained from accident analyses for accident management approaches,
• The closure in 2024 and 2025 of seven NEA collaborative projects (ATLAS-3, ETHARINUS, QUENCH-ATF, THEMIS, ESTER, PANDA and ROSAU) addressing issues identified through the Fukushima-Daiichi accident investigations and analyses, with the risk of losing unique capabilities with long-term built experimental facilities and expertise with significant investments. As built facilities and expertise can address some remaining gaps, especially for advanced fuel technologies (ATFs, high burnups, increased enrichment) for existing reactors and emerging issues for new reactors, their loss would certainly be detrimental,
• The need to focus the research, considering remaining gaps (from the viewpoints of industry, regulators, and researchers) and developing frameworks around sets of complementary experimental facilities, to address needs for both operating and future reactors.

It was recommended to continue the discussions in fora reuniting regulators, industry and operating agents to collaboratively identify core capabilities needed, in the nearer and longer term, to address the safety issues for operating and future reactors. The main outcomes of the event are summarised here.

The workshop is organised as a response to the above recommendation. It shall enable nuclear safety regulators, industry, and research organisations to share their views on how the Fukushima-Daiichi accident has been used to inform accident management approaches for operating and future reactors, and on remaining potentials for their enhancement.

It shall also provide an opportunity to review research capabilities and opportunities offered by research facilities’ operating agents. As such, it will be a forum where regulators, industry and research operating agents will share views on potentials for future collaborative research.

Discussions should establish recommendations on research directions, needed capabilities and stakeholder involvement to continue supporting the development of optimized accident management strategies for operating and future reactors.

These recommendations shall, in turn, support operating agents to defend maintaining and developing core capabilities, and designing collaborative projects proposals to answer stakeholders’ research needs.

The workshop is organised in three sessions:

• Session 1 Presentations to review safety knowledge gaps and emerging issues for accident management in reactors, considering insights from the Fukushima-Daiichi accident,
• Session 2 Presentations to review collaborative research programmes, capabilities and potentials for future research offered by operating agents,
• Session 3 Panel to discuss further dissemination and integration of Fukushima Daiichi insights, key research capabilities, related frameworks and needed stakeholder involvement for the future.

General Chair: Toyoshi FUKETA, Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (NDF), University of Tokyo, Japan

Members of the Organising Committee:

- Alice DUFRESNE, Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), France
- Hossein ESMAILI, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC), United States
- Mitch FARMER, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), United States
- Toyoshi FUKETA, Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (NDF), University of Tokyo, Japan
- Didier JACQUEMAIN, Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), France
- Yuji KUMAGAI, Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), France
- Terttaliisa LIND, Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland
- Shinya MIZOKAMI, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), Japan
- Andrew MORREALE, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), Canada
- Damian PEKO, US Department of Energy (DOE), United States
- Joy REMPE, Rempe and Associates, LLC, United States

Sponsors: ANL, DOE, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), NEA, USNRC