Safety research plan, JFY 2013 edition

As for the regulatory issues the governments or JNES considered necessary, JNES had updated every year 'safety research plan' in respective research areas necessary for solving the regulatory issues (safety research needs) and was conducting safety research to obtain the results, etc. 'Safety research plan, JFY 2013 Edition' was compiled aiming at promotion of appropriate reflection and flexible application of research achievements for tacking the regulatory issues taking account of importance and urgency dependent on trend of nuclear safety regulations as well as collective management of safety research and safety survey. 5 new research projects were established with 4 unified research projects and 6 terminated research projects. Finally modified safety research areas, subjects and research projects, JFY 2013 Edition were as follows: design review of nuclear power plant (7 subjects and each subject having several research projects totaled 19), control management of nuclear power plant (one subject having 4 research projects), nuclear fuel cycle (2 subjects and each subject having several research projects totaled 4), nuclear fuel cycle backend (2 subjects and each subject having several research projects totaled 5), nuclear emergency preparedness and response (3 subjects and each subject having several research projects totaled 7) and bases of nuclear safety technology (3 subjects and each subject having several research projects totaled 6). Safety reviews consisted of 6 projects in 3 areas extracting the regulatory issues. As for urgent research projects on the basis of the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident, 7 research projects in 4 urgent subjects were as follows: examination for new safety regulation (4 research projects generalized in the above research projects), development of newly necessary evaluation methods (one research project generalized in the above research project), evaluation of the validity for the work for convergence at Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident (2 research projects added to above research projects) and horizontal development to other nuclear power plants. (T. Tanaka)