Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2016 NuclearPlantJournal.com
29
pleased to now have IFNEC under the
NEA umbrella and to be working closely
with it and its 66 member countries.
7.
Did Gen IV get any momentum from
the interest in advanced reactors and the
small modular reactors?
I think what we’re seeing is that
multiple countries have expressed interest
in doing something and in some cases,
we’ve noticed that some privately started
efforts have actually leaped into the
lead. There’s a long variety, a long list of
groups that have been launched in the last
five years or so, many funded by wealthy
individuals from Silicon Valley, for
example, who are interested in saving the
planet, and they’ve started the process and
have got these companies going. There’s
probably a dozen companies around the
world that are trying to develop these
advanced technologies. So, we’ll see if
any of those are going to be successful.
I noticed that the US Department of
Energy has created a program called
Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in
Nuclear (GAIN) that makes its laboratory
infrastructure available to many of these
companies. So if they want to do testing,
or they want to deploy prototypes, they
can get assistance from the National
Laboratories to do that. That shows you
that the energy may well have shifted
to these private organizations and less
to governments. Nevertheless, through
Gen IV and other cooperation, our
governments are interested in pursuing
nuclear R&D cooperatively.
8.
Describe the NEA law school
program.
The law program that we’ve created
has proven to be an extraordinarily
successful course. The International
School of Nuclear Law or ISNL is an
intensive two-week course that covers all
aspects of nuclear law. The people who
attend are generally lawyers. They receive
a very intensive exposure to various
nuclear technical aspects as well. So, if
you’re a lawyer and you’re not familiar
with nuclear technology, you get a crash
course in the technology, and you also
learn about the legal aspects. And this
is something that’s been very valuable
to many people, as it has furthered their
careers. Many NEA experts lecture as
part of this, including myself, and Steve
Burns, the current Chairman of the US
NRC, who continues to teach because he
finds it very valuable to provide his views
to the students. The students are a very
eclectic group. You see young people,
young lawyers who are beginning their
careers and want to understand the broad
nuclear field.You see experienced lawyers
who come in, who don’t knowmuch about
nuclear but want to understand more. And
there’s a large contingent that’s funded
by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) in Vienna who come
from developing countries in Africa, the
Middle East or elsewhere. They come
because their governments are trying to
build an infrastructure to be able to safely
regulate and manage nuclear activities in
their respective countries.
9.
Do you have any alliance with an
academic institution for the law course?
The ISNL is implemented in
cooperation with Montpellier University
in France, and they handle the academic
part of it. When people graduate
from the course, they get an academic
certificate, and that’s issued, actually,
from Montpellier. We have been asked by
some organizations to consider making
an equivalent course available in Asia
because a lot of the attendees have come
from China and other parts of Asia, but
it’s very difficult for many of them to be
in France. So, there’s interest in having
us replicate this course in Asia, and
we’ve been looking at that possibility. I
think we’d like to do it, but the course is
actually very resource-intensive. It takes
a lot of staff time. So we’re trying to
decide whether we’re able to support a
second course.
10.
Concluding comments.
It’s particularly interesting and
memorable to note that the Regulatory
Information Conference (RIC) took place
at this time five years ago. On this very
day, March 11, 2011, five years ago, I
was meeting with delegates from around
the world as an NRC Commissioner in
the United States. Towards the end of
the day, the last delegation I met with
was a Japanese delegation from the
Nuclear Safety Commission, and we
spent an hour and a half talking about
Japan’s preparations for seismic events.
And the irony of that, to wake up the
next morning and discover that there
was a huge earthquake in Japan and this
horrible tsunami, and then of course, the
things that followed. It’s hard not to think
back to that and remember how innocent
the conversation seemed five years ago
today about seismic events, and then all
that has happened over the last five years,
and the tragedy of the tsunami and the
difficulty to deal with the aftermath of
the accident at the plant. And so, I just
wanted to assure everyone that while we
look at the technical aspects of all of this
at the NEA, we never forget that so many
people have lost their lives and so many
people have suffered, and then in relation
to the nuclear aspect, so many people
are still suffering because they can’t go
back to their homes. I think that everyone
in the nuclear community continues to
think about all of these people, and we
want to do what we can to help them, and
work hard to make sure that nothing like
this ever happens again anywhere in the
world.
Contact: OECD Nuclear Energy
Agency, telephone: 33 (0) 1 45 24 10 15,
email:
.
www.
NuclearPlantJournal.
com
