 In the same place where we had a dinner on the first day. So on that, we have two types of menu, the vegetarian and the fish menu. So you just need to give me an option, tick against your name what type of menu you want. This is needed in the, you know, the cafeteria. Please circulate it and then I will collect it at the end. Okay. Last presentation of the day should be a little shorter than the previous one. Getting a pre-feasibility study for a nuclear power program. This is the topic that I was requested to present on and I thought, oh, it's very interesting because it's not a specific presentation that we typically give. It's usually part of a presentation that we give. So I kind of thought, I guess it depends what they mean by pre-feasibility study. So I just want to know, and I think the topic came from the comment sheets at the last meeting, you know, they asked for topics on, you know, what would you like to hear about in a future version of this course or what do you think they should hear about? I think that's where the topic came from. So when you think of a pre-feasibility study, what does it mean to you for nuclear power? And I'm thinking of things like, who do you think does the pre-feasibility study? What do you think is in it? And why do you think it's done? When do you think it's done? Kind of those key questions. Any ideas? Yeah. If you have any idea about any of those things, I mean, what's in the name? So I'm talking about the term pre-feasibility study for nuclear power. Okay? Good. To see if nuclear power would be feasible for a country, for a project, yeah? For a country. Good. So already we're right. We're at the right level. We're at the country level. Who do you think would conduct a pre-feasibility study? Owner-operator? Government? I would say most typically for a pre-feasibility study, it would be the government. When you talk about owner-operator, then that's talking more about a feasibility study for a specific project. Why would a government conduct a pre-feasibility study for nuclear power? Okay? So the question is, should we start the program or should we not start the program? Yeah? Okay. Anybody else? Alex? I think you said something really important, and that's that it should be part of working towards a national decision. And I think that's the key thing, is that when I think of the topic of conducting a pre-feasibility study, what I want to present on and what I think we're getting at is, how do you do all the things in that preparatory phase that get you towards the end of phase one, which we would call establishing a national position? Now, there's also this issue of terminology with the term feasibility study, which according to current agency guidance, and it can be confusing because we've had some of our newcomer countries have said, well, our president had a memo in 2007 and they commissioned a cabinet committee to come up with a feasibility study and to find out whether nuclear power is feasible for our country. And that's what that's called in that country. But I would say, you know, it's a challenge at the IAEA because many countries and organizations call the same thing by different names. So it's difficult for us to seek to capture international best practices that are evolving. I mean, we say one thing in 2009, we revisit it based on our experience and we refine and evolve the messages eight years later. So finding common terminology can be a challenge. So even though some countries may refer to what I would call a pre-feasibility study as a feasibility study, we sort of have to, for the sake of talking about things, use some sort of convention. So in my presentation, I'm going to talk about the role of pre-feasibility study as part of establishing a national position on nuclear power. And you can see, I'll sort of introduce the concept, then I'll describe this process overall, clarify the role of the pre-feasibility study in that process, and then also sort of try to differentiate between things that we call a comprehensive report and feasibility studies as well. And then finally, we'll just talk a little bit about documenting and communicating the national decision, which will come from the results of those pre-feasibility studies. So you've seen this in the last presentation, this is the 19 infrastructure issues. And the one that I'm going to focus on in this presentation is this one here in the top left, what we call national position. And again, this is sort of an invented term that we use to try to explain maybe the best practices that we see in other countries. And here's how it's defined in our guidance document on establishing a national position, sorry, this actually comes from a milestone document which I passed around. The government should adopt a clear statement which reflects broad political support of its intent to develop a nuclear power program. And then it should communicate that intent locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally. So that's sort of the overall definition of national position. And then the question is what are the elements that go in to feed that process? So you can see that that is the outcome of a process that establishes a strategy and a commitment to develop, implement, and maintain a safe, secure, and sustainable nuclear power program. And this process begins in an ideal world with the review of a country's national economic and social development policy. So in countries where we have a lot of success or we see success, it's because they have something like the XX country Vision 2030 or the XX country Vision 2040. How many of your countries have a document like that? I know some of your countries have documents like that that you aren't raising your hand. Yeah, this is a very common practice is to have these sort of long term forward looking development plans and then the sort of medium term implementation plans that get renewed every five years or so. But this begins when you look at this sort of triangle of economy, social development, maybe environment as part of it. But usually what you have is a document that says by the year 2040, we expect our GDP to be at this level. We expect our industrial development to be at this level. So what do we need to do to get there? We need a lot more electricity. We need clean electricity. We need advanced science and technology. We need advanced manufacturing. We need all these things to help have positive spillover effects for our development. And a lot of times that document then can be the impetus for developing a national position for a nuclear power program. So the next step when you say, well, we're going to need all this electricity and we want it to be clean and we want to be modern and do all these things, is to do comprehensive energy planning, which you heard a lot about yesterday. Now, as a result of that energy planning, you should have one of two things. Either nuclear power should be considered as an option in your future energy mix. Or you should say a nuclear power should not be included as an option. Now, if nuclear power is included as an option, according to the IAEA milestones, we think that you should look in depth at all 19 of those issues. And when you look at all 19 issues, that's what we're calling a comprehensive report. Now, what goes into that comprehensive report is generally a set of pre-feasibility studies on specific issues. Like coming back to the first slide, what's in a name? There is a country I know that did what we would call a comprehensive report. It's a phase one report examining all the issues, identifying gaps and saying here are the plans for filling those gaps and what we would do, should a positive decision be taken. That country calls that document a pre-feasibility study. That's not the case for most countries. So what we would call pre-feasibility studies are the bits and pieces that go into the comprehensive report. And it's very common for countries who have a group task to say, well, tell us if the nuclear power option is feasible for the country, to look at a couple select issues first. If you're really serious, you do need to look at all 19, but it may make sense to save yourself effort to look at some of the key issues. Like if your grid won't be able to accommodate commercially available nuclear power plants in the foreseeable timeframe of the plan in the next 20 years or 30 years, then nuclear power isn't going to be a feasible option for you. So why would you study in depth the gaps in your legal framework or regulatory body? It helps to look at some of the most critical issues first. Some of the other critical issues besides grid would be siding. There are some small countries that may not have a suitable site for nuclear power. Some countries may not have a site that's in a good place where they have a sustainable water source for cooling. So that's also an issue we sometimes see that a country will conduct a pre-feasibility study of. So I would say how I would define feasibility study is a study on a specific issue or a couple specific issues that looks at whether nuclear power program is a feasible option for a country. And then if countries are seriously considering they should keep going and make sure that they prepare such studies that encompass all 19 infrastructure issues. Now then the outcome of that process is that it's going to be once you've studied all those issues you either decide to introduce nuclear power and you make that commitment at milestone one or you decide not to introduce nuclear power at that time. This is the case for a lot of countries and they sort of say, well, not now but we've done these studies. We'll keep the option open. We'll come back and look again in five years and see if the assumptions have changed and some of the countries we work with are like that. Then if there's the commitment to introduce nuclear power that leads to what we call the national decision. Now there's a couple things that are constant throughout this process. One is that you should always have a rationale in terms of your energy strategy. So that's not something that you do one time and then you spend five years doing all these things and you get to the end. The energy planning and the energy assumptions need to be constantly revisited throughout the process. The other thing that goes on throughout the whole process is stakeholder involvement. Where we've seen big issues in countries and where they've had problems is where they say, well, our president's interested in the nuclear option so we're studying it but we're not going to tell people because if people here were studying the nuclear option now they're going to panic and freak out and there'll be public backlash and then it won't be possible. So we're just going to study it really quietly and trust me that never works. It's much better to tell stakeholders throughout the whole process what you're doing to be open, honest and transparent and communicate the results of the studies that you're doing. So the national position can consider political, economic, social, environmental and development objectives of the country. It can consider the national energy policy including the potential role of nuclear power in the energy mix. It can consider the need for stakeholder involvement, communicated at all levels and it can consider the required national nuclear infrastructure which includes the relevant treaties and conventions. So according to our document there's four distinct elements of a national position and one of those is the topic we're looking at, pre-feasibility study, the others are national policy development, again energy analysis and planning and stakeholder involvement. So hopefully some of these themes as they are repeated and repeated are looking familiar. Now in the guidance document on building a national position for a new nuclear power program, the pre-feasibility study is defined like this. The results of the energy analysis and planning must be complimented by further social, economic, financial and technical evaluations regarding the introduction of a new nuclear power program. It may be performed by various entities and will provide political decision makers with an informed perspective on the infrastructure and institutions that are necessary to support a nuclear power program. And then I would define the comprehensive report as basically taking that and ensuring that it covers all 19 issues and not just a subset. So here's sort of one way of looking at it is you have a pre-feasibility study or studies multiple and these are looking at specific issues. Whereas a comprehensive report is maybe backed up by these and covers all 19 issues. And then as the outcome of that, if it recommends that the country is well positioned to introduce nuclear power, you form a national strategy for doing so. Here's yet another way of looking at this flow chart and this is also meant to help sort of draw the distinction between a pre-feasibility study and a feasibility study for a project. So again, you have energy planning, what's the energy mix? Okay, if it's an option then let's study more in-depth certain issues, infrastructure gaps, economics and financing is a big one. Again, grid is something that probably should be looked at very early. And then you would go forward, make the decision, and then you would look more in-depth at a feasibility study. And again, this is going to be likely performed by various entities in the government. This is looking at the feasibility of a program as a whole. A feasibility study is looking at a specific project, building this nuclear power plant with this technology on this site. Is the site suitable? Is the financing sound? Can we make a final investment decision? Here's the milestones approach chart again. So you see the timeline and then I've sort of interlaid here. Here's where you would see pre-feasibility studies. From the point where you have nuclear option as an option in your energy mix, you might conduct on one issue or a couple issues related to the program as a whole. And that'll extend through phase one. At this point in phase one, you would move from PFS to preparing a comprehensive report. National strategy would come just after milestone one when the country is ready to make a commitment, then they communicate their national strategy. And then you would see a feasibility study related not to the program, but to a project sort of in phase two in the beginning of phase three as you prepare for a final investment decision. What's that? Yeah, I would say a bankability study is a type of feasibility study or it's a, you're looking at the feasibility of a specific project and bankability is one aspect. And I don't think you, that's why I stretched it into phase three a little bit. You wouldn't have a final investment decision without a bankability study, which Jordan calls it a bankability study. Others consider it as part of the project feasibility study. So, the next thing that's important is if the decision to embark on a nuclear power program is taken, this should be communicated in a transparent and unambiguous manner. And it should represent a national consensus, as we've mentioned several times. And it may require some sort of consultative process, usually with a legislature or parliament, to ensure that there's broad, sustainable, multi-party, national, long-term support. It should be clearly documented. And there are countries, and I know you're some of them, that you say, well, this seems hard to get, so we're not going to do it. And then they seem surprised when the program doesn't fail or the party changes in one party is against. So, again, it's our strong recommendation. Countries document this decision in different forms. The one example I mentioned earlier was the UAE's national white paper on the nuclear power option. This can be published by the government. Endorsing it at the highest level can help. Having an executive or presidential decree, act of a parliament or similar institution, publication in a government gazette indicating this decision. These aren't all necessary. But what we see sometimes is that the nuclear power program might be championed, say, by the Atomic Energy Commission. And the Atomic Energy Commission may not have total buy-in from the other ministries. They may have resistance from the Ministry of Energy. They may have resistance from the Ministry of Environment. So if you try to pursue, without having national buy-in, you can be setting yourself up for risk and setting yourself up for failure. So again, transparency is essential. Stakeholder involvement is essential. So once you've studied for the decision, you've planned for the decision, you've taken the decision, you've communicated the decision. The next is to implement the decision. And following that decision, this is basically describing what's going to happen for your country in phase two. This is where you establish the required infrastructure. You designate roles and responsibilities to key organizations. And in some cases, these key organizations either need to be strengthened and sort of reinvented from existing organizations, or you may need to start these organizations from scratch. And these organizations are the first one is the government coordinating mechanism, which we mentioned. We refer to it as the Nuclear Energy Program Implanting Organization. This can be a standalone organization with its own staff and budget in mandate. That's the case in some countries. In other countries, it's very effective. It's a sort of interagency committee. Maybe there's a high-level body of relevant ministers that takes decisions. And then there's lower-level working groups composed of working-level technical expertise from different parts of the government or different parts of the country that work together. That's one. The next is an independent regulatory body. And then the other is the owner-operator organization. And then the recommendations that come out of this comprehensive report should be translated into action plans for each responsible organization. So the NEPIO should know its role and responsibility going forward. The regulatory body should know what it needs to do on what time frame. The owner-operator should know what it's responsible for in terms of preparing for the contracting process. So in conclusion, developing a national position is a process that involves both technical and political considerations. The decision to embark on nuclear power should be based on sound information. And this is in the form of a pre-feasibility study or studies, as well as eventually a comprehensive report covering all 19 infrastructure issues. And the process typically begins with an evaluation of social, economic, and environmental policy objectives of the country. Again, those high-level vision documents, which leads to energy planning and then to further study. And transparency throughout the process is essential. And the last one's important. It might be necessary to reevaluate if the decision was taken several years ago, but no implementation has occurred to make sure all the assumptions from the pre-feasibility studies and the comprehensive report are still valid. So here's some more information. Again, this is the same link as before to the infrastructure bibliography. You can click on the first issue of national position and see all the resources that are available. One of those resources is the document I've cited several times on building a national position for a new nuclear power program. The other is an e-learning module on that topic. And that's all I have for this presentation. Short and sweet. OK, so I'm going to test your knowledge.