International Conference on Research Reactors:
Safe Management and Effective Utilization

14-18 November 2011, Rabat, Morocco

Following the core melting and the radiological consequences as a result of the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima-Daiichi (F-D) NPPs, there has been a worldwide movement to revise safety assessments of nuclear power installations. At the same time, the community of research reactor (RR) stakeholders, operators and regulators publically expressed their readiness to re-evaluate and update the safety status of their facilities, in case similar external events should occur. Although RRs generate (on average) one per-mil of the energy of NPPs, and accordingly their radioactive source term is reduced, there are important common safety related topics to be checked and revised (e.g.: the seismic design, blackout and external events resulting in the loss of the ultimate heat sink, emergency organization/crisis preparedness, etc.). As the first immediate step to assist the Member States (MS) to share the lessons learned from the events, the IAEA distributed a questionnaire. The purpose of this questionnaire is to collect from MS operating RRs preliminary information on the types of activities initiated as a result of the unprecedented F-D accident last March. The questionnaire contained two general questions and three specific questions with multiple proposed answers. For the specific questions, it was acceptable to mark more than one answer for each question. By October 2011, more than sixty answers were received, from 29 MS (out of 56 operating RRs). Only one out of three answered the first question by mentioning that no dedicated activity was requested after the F-D accident. Moreover, one out of five reported revisions in the DBA list as well as in the EPP, although only one out of three made changes in the EPP. Finally, two out of three answers indicated no changes in the utilization/operation plan following the lesson learned from the accident. The paper purpose is to analyse comprehensively and present the responds to the questionnaire, in order to draw the first conclusions about the IAEA follow-up activity requested on this subject.

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