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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2015
Public Confidence...
analysis to give them a better context
for examining the cost of nuclear power
versus other sources and how nuclear
can be integrated into their electricity
systems. The analysis we provide gives
them an outside objective viewpoint on
that, and I think that has a great deal of
value as they make their decisions. But
I think the most important areas that we
are working on is nuclear safety, and we
have many activities in the area of safety;
we’re looking at how to make sure plants
are as safe as they possibly can be, we’re
facilitating the exchange of international
information as to how we’re all going to
try to achieve that, and we are making
sure to identify and share important
lessons learned from the Fukushima
disaster. These are all important, not
just for existing plants, but for any plants
anyone plans to build in the near future,
because unless the public is convinced
that nuclear is safe, then there’s no
opportunity to build new plants. So, we
think a clear and strong safety platform is
a very, very important key to that. Finally,
we are also working with countries to
facilitate discussions about developing
advanced technologies that can be used
to make plants more efficient and safer in
the future, such as our accident-tolerant
fuels.
I think there are a variety of things
that the NEA can do, but at the end of
the day, our role is not to help countries
deploy nuclear power plants. Our role is
to give them the information and provide
the services they need to help make
good decisions, and that’s what we try
to do, to support an objective decision-
making process based on economics and
technology and safety.
4.
What happens when nuclear energy
countries are not your members?
We have partnerships with countries,
such as China. China is not a member of
the NEA, but we have a close partnership
with them, a growing partnership. Their
experts attend many of our technical
meetings and working groups, and
they’re becoming a stronger and stronger
participant, and I expect to see their
participation grow over time. Outside
of India and China, I think the rest of
the major participants in the nuclear
field are NEA members. There are a
couple of countries that have nuclear
plants that are not our members, such as
South Africa, but even in that case, we
have dialogue, and we do invite them to
certain meetings. Other countries, which
are not our members are starting to have
stronger collaboration with us. To build
on that, it’s essential that they can draw
from and benefit from the knowledge we
collect from our members, for example
on issues like safety, as they are operating
their plants. We look forward to working
with them on that.
5.
How do the organizations become a
partner?
We essentially produce a plan
periodically
that
discusses
our
international relationships, and we
present that plan to the member countries,
and the member countries comment
and eventually approve or disapprove
of the plan. The plan is pretty specific
in terms of the countries that we are
focusing on and the kinds of engagement
we’d like to have. And we use that as
a guidance document to decide where
to put our emphasis, because we can’t
do everything. We’re not large enough
to have every country that has nuclear
aspirations engage with us, but we have
a lot of them.
We also don’t have one-size-fits-all
criteria. What we try to do is look at each
individual country. We prioritize based on
the preferences of member countries. We
also prioritize based on what the OECD
Council has indicated are the strategic
partners of the OECD, which include
China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and South
Africa. And so, we look at the list that the
OECD Council has prioritized, and we
see where we might be able to support
it. And we use member country input
to prioritize which countries we engage
with.
6.
What has been the success of the
NEA’s International Nuclear Emergency
Exercises (INEX)?
We are the ones responsible for
facilitating this, and we’re still actively
talking to and signing up countries for
participation in the INEX exercises. I
think it’s very important. I think there’s no
question in the aftermath of Fukushima
that there’s room for improvement when
it comes to emergency preparedness, and
this exercise is a tremendous opportunity
for countries that are interested in
increasing their skills and increasing their
knowledge about emergencypreparedness
and to participate in an international
exercise related to that. We are very, very
excited about INEX 5, and I think it’ll be
a tremendous learning experience for the
countries that participate.
One of the most difficult aspects
of
emergency
preparedness
is
communication with the public because
people are very worried, obviously, about
what’s happened and what’s happening.
They want information, and to have
highly technical organizations looking at
very technical information — counting
microsieverts, and looking at potential
doses, and looking at plumes — this is of
not much interest to the average person.
They don’t understand it.
How to communicate that is a
significant challenge, and that’s one
of the areas that the NEA will become
more involved in. We’re creating a new
division within the Agency that looks
at the human aspects of nuclear safety,
and it will include things like public
communications in order to effectively
manage the confusion that comes in the
wake of an emergency so it doesn’t turn
into a hazard. I agree that it’s an area
that we all need to work on. We also
say, though, that even though there was
a lot of concern in the aftermath of the
Japanese case, for the most part they did
a very effective job in getting people out
of harm’s way. Of course, there were
problems.
