Belarus to attend WWER Regulators’ Forum

Belarus’ representatives will attend, for the first time, the Forum of the State Nuclear Safety Authorities of the Countries Operating WWER Type Reactors, BelTA learned from the communications and public information office of the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry (Gosatomnadzor).

The WWER Regulators’ Forum will be held in Yerevan on 2-4 September. The Belarusian delegation led by head of Gosatomnadzor Olga Lugovskaya will participate in the forum in the capacity as observer. The Forum will discuss the ways to strengthen the commissioning program of new WWER NPPs, reactor physics code verification with commissioning data; and the use of Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) methods.

A separate report will be made on the development of regulatory infrastructure in Belarus in the context of the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant.

By participating in the forum Belarus’ Gosatomnadzor continues its work on expanding the cooperation with the international associations of regulatory bodies in the field of nuclear and radiation safety. In 2012 Belarus became a member of the Regulatory Cooperation Forum (RCF). In March 2015, Belarus was admitted as an observer to the Western European Nuclear Regulators Association (WENRA).

The Forum of the State Nuclear Safety Authorities of the Countries Operating WWER Type Reactors was established in 1993. Its objective is to help enhance the nuclear safety and radiation protection in the countries concerned through the utilization of the collective experience, information exchange and consolidation of efforts of the national nuclear safety authorities to study safety problems and improve regulatory policies and practices.

The current members of the Forum are Armenia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Finland, Ukraine, India, Iran and China. The observers are Germany and the IAEA. In 2015 the WWER Regulators’ Forum decided to invite Belarus as observer.