[en] The 25/2009 Decision of the Hungarian Parliament has granted prior consent to begin preparatory works to build new reactor blocks at the Paks Nuclear Power Plant site. Based on that Decision, the Hungarian National Atomic Energy Authority, as the supervising organization of nuclear activities, has started to develop nuclear safety standards for the new blocks. The draft regulation is complete; professional consultation is currently underway. This article presents the additional requirements of the current legislation and the new blocks. (TRA)

[en] Most of the laboratories in Malaysian Nuclear Agency are using chemicals in their research activities. However, it is known that using of chemicals without proper knowledge especially on the material characteristics as well as safe handling procedure may cause great harm to the workers. Therefore, Safety, Health and Environmental Committee (JKSHE) sees the need to establish a good chemical hazard management to ensure that a safe and healthy workplace and environment is provided. One of the elements in chemical hazard management is to carry out Chemical Hazard Risk Assessment (CHRA). The assessment was done so that decision can be made on suitable control measures upon use of such chemicals, such as induction and training courses to be given to the workers and health surveillance activities that may be needed to protect the workers. For this, JKSHE has recommended to conduct CHRA for one of the laboratories at Secondary Standard Dosimetry Laboratory (SSDL) namely Film Dosimeter Processing Room (dark room) as the initial effort towards a better chemical hazard management. This paper presents the case study where CHRA was conducted to identify the chemical hazards at the selected laboratory, the adequacy of existing control measures and finally the recommendation for more effective control measures. (author)

[en] The act of the safety regulations and standards, how to understand exactly the meaning and how to apply the regulations and standards in appropriate fields are discussed. Some problems to be paid attention are put forward in quoting the related regulations and standards, that is, the quoted regulations and standards must be the latest edition, and must be of the pertinence and comprehensiveness. (authors)

[en] This report describes the essential practical issues to be considered by organizations aiming to strengthen safety culture. It is intended for senior executives, managers and first line supervisors in operating organizations. Although safety culture cannot be directly regulated, it is important that members of regulatory bodies understand how their actions affect the development of attempts to strengthen safety culture and are sympathetic to the need to improve the less formal human related aspects of safety. The report is therefore of relevance to regulators, although not intended primarily for them. The International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG) introduced the concept of safety culture in its INSAG-4 report in 1991. Since then, many papers have been written on safety culture, as it relates to organizations and individuals, its improvement and its underpinning prerequisites. Variations in national cultures mean that what constitutes a good approach to enhancing safety culture in one country may not be the best approach in another. However, INSAG seeks to provide pragmatic and practical advice of wide applicability in the principles and issues presented in this report. Nuclear and radiological safety are the prime concerns of this report, but the topics discussed are so general that successful application of the principles should lead to improvements in other important areas, such as industrial safety, environmental performance and, in some respects, wider business performance. This is because many of the attitudes and practices necessary to achieve good performance in nuclear safety, including visible commitment by management, openness, care and thoroughness in completing tasks, good communication and clarity in recognizing major issues and dealing with them as a priority, have wide applicability

[en] Due to the recent Fukushima accident, the potential risks at one and only nuclear research reactor in the country, which is the PUSPATI TRIGA Reactor (RTP), has increasingly gain concerns and an attempt on the development of Level 1 Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) for this reactor has been commenced. The preliminary scope of the PSA is to analyse the risk of core degradation during normal daily operation due to the random component failure and human error. SPAR-H and THERP method is used for quantifying human error probability (HEP). However, the scopes of this study only cover the qualitative parts that use interview/questionnaire method. The objectives of the questionnaire are to identify the main action for RTP operators when any undesired incident occurs during full power operation that might be caused by random component failures. From the questionnaires that have been conducted, the respondents consisted of 4 licensed operators and 9 trainee operators. All licensed operators have experience of operating reactor for more than 15 years while the trainee operator have been operate the reactor with experience of less than 10 years. Generally, in the event of an abnormal condition involving the reactor, an operator whether a licensed operator or the trainee does not have to ask permission in advance from the top individuals to carry out scram. This is to prevent the situation becoming increasingly severe if the reactor is still operating. With complete training and knowledge derived from the management, an operator can act efficiently in any emergency case. (author)

[en] Benefits: Overall site-wide safety goals, appropriately decomposed and apportioned, will provide an effective basis for grading the safety analysis effort, as permitted and encouraged by the CRL site licence.

[en] To achieve a higher level of nuclear safety and security, it needs to develop the safety and security culture not only in the facility but also in the regulatory body. The regulatory body, especially needs to develop the safety and security culture within the organization, because it has a function to promote and oversee the culture in the facilities. In this sense, the regulatory body should become a role model. Development of the nuclear safety and security culture should be started by properly understanding its concept and awakening the awareness of individual and organization on the importance of nuclear safety and security. For effectiveness of the culture development in the regulatory body, the following steps are suggested to be taken: setting up of the regulatory requirements, self-assessment, independent assessment review, communication with the licensee, oversight of management system implementation, and integration with regulatory activities. The paper discusses those steps in the framework of development of nuclear safety and security culture in the regulatory body, as well as some important elements in building of the culture in the nuclear facilities. (author)

[en] The classification of initiating events for safety analysis report (SAR) chapter 15 is categorized into moderate frequency events (MF), infrequent events (IF), and limiting faults (LF) depending on the frequency of its occurrence. For the non-LOCA safety analysis with the purpose to get construction or operation license, however, it is assumed that the operator response action to mitigate the events starts at 30 minutes after the initiation of the transient regardless of the event categorization. Such an assumption of corresponding operator response time may have over conservatism with the MF and IF events and results in a decrease in the safety margin compared to its acceptance criteria. In this paper, the plant conditions (PC) are categorized with the definitions in SAR 15 and ANS 51.1. Then, the consequence of response for safety-related operator action time is determined based on the PC in ANSI 58.8. The operator response time for safety analysis regarding PC are reviewed and suggested. The clarifying alarm response procedure would be required for the guideline to reduce the operator response time when the alarms indicate the occurrence of the transient

[en] This paper summarizes the first assessment performed by the IRSN related to the management of French power water reactors (PWR) safety. The conclusions of this assessment were submitted to the 'advisory committee' in April 2008. After an introduction reminding the French industrial and regulatory context as well as the way the assessment has been conducted, the relationship between safety and competitiveness is briefly discussed. Then the main issues and recommendations pointed out by the IRSN assessment are presented. These concern in particular: the balance between the shift operation team and the outage project team; the real-time decision-making capabilities of plant managers; the lessons learnt from the analyses of decision-making processes; the management of cultural changes. Finally, a conclusion presents a global diagnosis in terms of strengths and weaknesses of the EDF safety management system and proposes some ideas regarding the 'priority given to safety', the meaning of safety used by operative people and the continuous improvement approach. Lastly, methodological lessons are pointed out. The slides of the presentation have been added at the end of the paper. (author)

[en] Approaches like Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty (BEPU) and concepts like Safety Margins (SM) are well established in Nuclear Reactor Safety (NRS). However continuous improvements in analytical techniques and in the sophistication of hardware products do not necessarily correspond to new industrial applications within Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) technology. The declining condition for nuclear technology also contributes to the lag between developments and applications definitely causing NPP safety at a level below the achievable level. The possibility to extend BEPU to all areas of the Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR), so-called BEPU-FSAR is outlined in the paper. This should be combined with the Extension of the SM concept (E-SM). BEPU-FSAR techniques may be at the origin of E-SM which also will need specific monitoring hardware. All of this may open new horizons for NRS and for acceptance of NPP by the public and the decisions makers. The paper describes recent accomplishments in the areas of BEPU and E-SM. (author)