Understanding Regulatory Needs and Relationships with the Regulator

Keynote speaker: Jong-In Lee (KINS, Korea)
Chair: Marianne Uematsu (Nuclear Department of French Embassy in Japan, Japan)
Speakers: Kristof Horvath, Marian Kristof, Ros Intan Purbasari, Anastassia F. Raskatch
Posters: T. Apostolov

Strong, competitive and independent position of the regulator are basic fundamentals of the nuclear safety. Open and truthful attitude of the regulator significantly assure the public about the nuclear installations’ safety. Close cooperation with nuclear facilities, reporting of all problems and accidents, presentation of the safety documents and open discussion and communication results in a high level of safety culture.

Of course regulatory activities are met with various problems and difficulties. Relatively weak economic environments in countries of Eastern Europe and Asia reduce the scope of the research activities and technical support for decision-making and negatively influence professional training and permanent education of the staff. The solution to this unacceptable situation lies within broad global cooperation through international organizations like IAEA (an example was given in the Indonesian presentation) or multilateral cooperation of several countries (as presented in the Slovakian lecture). The main goal of all these activities is to share knowledge and resources in the area of nuclear safety – thus getting more useful results for less money.

On the other hand, western countries having only minor economic problems are dealing with the question of the continuously decreasing number of young people choosing to study nuclear science and technology leading to a reduced number of future staff. This phenomenon certainly does not affect only regulators but influences the whole nuclear business and establishes the serious issue to be dealt with in the very near future, especially in connection with an expected expansion of nuclear energy production. Unfortunately due to the lack of representatives from western countries no meaningful discussion could be initiated on this issue.