Multinational design evaluation programme - Annual report March 2013-March 2014

The Multinational Design Evaluation Programme (MDEP) is a multinational initiative to leverage the resources and knowledge of national regulatory authorities who are, or will shortly be, undertaking the review of new reactor power plant designs. MDEP incorporates a broad range of activities including enhancing multilateral cooperation within existing regulatory frameworks, and increasing multinational convergence of codes, standards, guides, and safety goals. A key concept throughout the work of MDEP is that national regulators retain sovereign authority for all licensing and regulatory decisions. Working groups are implementing the activities in accordance with programme plans with specific activities and goals, and have established the necessary interfaces both within and outside of the MDEP members. In the past year, MDEP has expanded to include cooperation on the VVER and ABWR designs and additional members have begun participating in the programme to share their experiences on these design reviews. This report provides the current status of the programme. Significant progress is being made on the overall MDEP goals of increased cooperation and enhanced convergence of requirements and practices. In addition, the lessons learnt from the 11 March 2011, events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are being incorporated into MDEP activities through the programme plans of design-specific working groups (DSWG). On this topic, the EPR Working Group has issued a common position which will be supplemented by five technical appendices by the end of 2014. Other DSWG are in the process of drafting such common positions. Several DSWGs' are facilitating the MDEP programme goal of enhanced cooperation: the EPRWG, the Vendor Inspection Cooperation Working Group (VICWG), the Digital Instrumentation and Controls Working Group (DICWG), the Codes and Standards Working Group (CSWG). Accomplishments to date provide confidence that the MDEP membership, structure and processes provide an effective method of accomplishing increased cooperation in regulatory design reviews. The interim results for 2013 and early 2014 include: - Commissioning workshops within the EPR and AP1000 working groups to begin considering how to cooperate on preoperational testing and commissioning oversight. - Common position addressing Fukushima related issues related to the EPR design. - A series of phone seminars with US NRC and CNSC on selected topics of their Phase two review, to learn from the already completed NRC design certification review. - Exchanges of letters between US NRC and NNSA containing questions and responses related to design and construction issues for the AP1000 in each country. - Establishment of VVER and ABWR DSWGs and prioritised topics for future discussion. - Cooperation on twelve witnessed vendor inspections and one joint inspection. - Technical Report on 'Common QA/QM Criteria for the Multinational Vendor Inspection'. - Technical Reports on 'Regulatory framework for the use of nuclear pressure-boundary codes and standards in MDEP countries', 'Lessons learnt on achieving harmonisation of codes and standards for pressure boundary components in nuclear power plants' and 'Fundamental attributes for the design and construction of pressure boundary components'. - Common position on 'Findings from code comparisons and establishment of a global framework towards pressure-boundary code harmonisation'. - Four common positions on digital instrumentation and controls for new reactors in the areas of: treatment of common cause failures resulting from software, treatment of Hardware Description Language (HDL) programmed devices for use in nuclear safety systems, digital I and C system pre-installation and initial on-site testing, and use of automatic testing in computer based systems as part of surveillance testing. - Revision of several common positions related to digital I and C to take into account recent developments and new members' views