 Good morning everyone and welcome to the panel on international collaboration on new reactor licensing. My name is Dan Dorman, I'm the NRC's Executive Director for Operations and in this session I am the session chair and I'll also be providing you an update on the NRC's cooperation with our Canadian counterparts, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission under our memorandum of cooperation on advanced reactor technologies and small modular reactors. But before I get into that I want to do a few brief administrative remarks and introduce our panel. I'm very excited to have some distinguished guests with us today to talk about our cooperative efforts in their organizations and for the housekeeping items just a reminder that the Wi-Fi code for attendees is RIC 2023, Rick 2023. Please remind you to silence any electronic devices. You see before you the QR code for the persons in the room, you can scan the QR code and provide us your questions in that format. For those joining virtually, once you've logged into the conference platform and joined the session you should have a tab for electronic Q&A. All questions will be added to the same queue and we'll try to get through as many questions as we can. Finally your feedback is important to us so please let us know what you thought about the RIC this year. Your insights help us to shape next year's program. Our senior leadership will be briefed in the next month or so on the accumulated feedback from our participants in the RIC this year and it's critical to us improving the conference each year. So now I'd like to introduce our panelists. Joining me today immediately to my right is Ms. Anna Bradford. In September 2021 Ms. Bradford is the Director of the Division of Nuclear Installation Safety at the International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA. She is responsible for establishment of the appropriate safety infrastructure and for continuously improving the safety of nuclear installations during site evaluation, design, construction, and operation. During her career she has led efforts in a wide range of technical and policy areas such as reactor long-term operation, low-level waste management and disposal, environmental reviews, fuel cycle facility licensing, and advanced reactor policy issues. She will be presenting on the IAEA's nuclear harmonization and standardization initiative particularly the regulatory track. To Anna's right is Marco Brugmans, the Deputy Chair of the Board of the Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection, the Independent Regulator in the Netherlands. Mr. Brugmans started at ANVS in 2015 and since has been internationally active both in nuclear safety and radiation protection. Currently he is the representative of ENSREG, the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group that advises the European Commission. He is their representative on the steering committee of the EU Small Modular Reactor Pre-Partnership. The regulatory track of the EU-SMR Pre-Partnership is the subject of his presentation. Then we'll be joined remotely by Mr. Petri Tipena. He is the Director General at the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, Stuk. Mr. Tipena joined Stuk in May 1996 and has been Director General since 2013. Throughout his career he has been an active participant in the work of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency or NEA, the IAEA and the EU. He is the Chair of the Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities of the NEA and the Vice-Chair of the Western European Nuclear Regulators Association. He will be presenting on the joint early review of the new ARD reactor by the regulators of Finland, France and Czechia. And finally we'll hear from Mr. Christopher Vickerson, the Director General of the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation or Founder of the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Vickerson started his international career in 1987 at the NEA in Paris for six years to enhance international cooperation in occupational radiation protection and emergency preparedness for nuclear accidents. In 1995 he became the Deputy Director General of the Swedish Nuclear Safety Authority where he spent 10 years regulating the nuclear industry. And from 2005 to the end of 2008 he worked at IAEA where he was in charge of policy matters in the Department for Nuclear Safety and Security. He has been the Director General of FANR since 2015 and today he will discuss the success story that is the cooperation between the United Arab Emirates and Korea. So let me now kick things off by briefly describing a key aspect of our cooperation with Canada. As a result of the growing global interest in using advanced reactor technologies and small modular reactors to address climate change and evolving energy demand, there is a heightened need for international collaboration. Therefore NRC is continuing to grow our engagement with international regulators. We took a significant step in this direction in 2019 through a memorandum of cooperation with the Canadian regulator to provide a mechanism for joint reviews of these reactors. This memorandum of cooperation represents an important step for both countries in our strong commitment to provide more effective, efficient and timely reviews of next generation technologies while continuing to achieve our individual safety missions. The MOC covers several types of projects including pre-licensing engagement, licensing reviews and sharing of science, research and development of common regulatory positions. There are many benefits to this collaboration. By sharing our people and our experiences we quickly become familiar with the many advanced reactor technologies and SMR designs being proposed in both countries and enhance our mutual readiness. Through the memorandum NRC and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission connects talent across both organizations to achieve common goals. Familiarization with each country's regulatory framework and processes, design requirements and acceptance criteria has allowed us to better understand the diverse review approaches in each country and how to increase harmonization. Through the MOC and participation in NEA and IAEA working groups, NRC and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission staff have been sharing our experience in advancing risk-informed technology inclusive and performance-based licensing approaches with international regulators. Ultimately collaboration builds positive relationships among the regulators which supports the safe and effective regulation and broad deployment of SMRs. Since launching the MOC there have been lessons learned and many successes. To date we have published seven joint products and there are more coming. These joint regulatory products may be geared toward specific vendors such as the reports on GE Hitachi's containment evaluation method, ex-energies reactor pressure vessel construction code and terrestrial energies methodology for developing a postulated initiating events list. We've also issued generic products that provide benefit to a range of end users such as comparisons of review approaches for safety classification in each country and a report that compares approaches for technology inclusive and risk-informed reviews in both countries. Products can also look at unique technical considerations for SMRs and advanced reactors. For example, we've issued two interim reports on tricep fuel qualification that reference the NEA Fuel Qualification Framework Goals alongside U.S. and Canadian expectations. This project provides an initial step toward harmonization and establishment of a global fuel qualification framework and knowledge base. We're currently collaborating on three specific aspects of the GE Hitachi BWR-X300 design which is under consideration for siting in both the U.S. and Canada. Our goal is to conduct efficient and coordinated technical reviews resulted in common technical positions within established schedules. The NRC and CNSC will strive to align on common technical positions that enhance standardization of the BWR-X300 design. We are continually seeking the next projects for collaboration that are mutually beneficial. The choice of projects is a mutual decision of NRC, CNSC and the vendor. The team is strategically adding impactful projects to its portfolio to best reflect both regulators' priorities and realize the most benefits. Our work with CNSC has highlighted the importance of global harmonization and standardization. The NRC envisions harmonization as an international effort where national regulators can collaborate to identify the most safety significant aspects of novel designs early and develop common technical positions to inform their safety decisions. These regulators can apply these technical positions in making decisions in accordance with their national laws and policies. This type of harmonization and collaboration can support safe and timely international deployment of SMRs and advanced reactors. This is the approach the NRC has taken. Our bilateral endeavor through the MOC with CNSC has been successful both in demonstrating the regulator's ability to collaborate and leading to mutually beneficial common positions and joint reports. It has also spotlighted specific challenges to harmonization initiatives that will need to be overcome and have introduced questions about national sovereignty that must be considered within the concepts of harmonization and standardization. It will be important to identify lessons learned from those efforts and establish a clear vision for addressing them. So with that I will turn the microphone over to Anna Bradford for her presentation. Thank you. As Dan mentioned I'm going to talk today about the nuclear harmonization and standardization initiative or NECI which was started last year by the IAEA and which was mentioned quite extensively by our director general excuse me in his keynote speech on the first day of the RIC. So next slide please. Let me spend just one minute describing the IAEA. It's a part of the United Nations and its mandate is that the agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace health and prosperity. It was established several decades ago and currently has 176 member states from around the world. The agency is involved in a wide range of nuclear-related activities but regarding nuclear safety and security specifically the agency issues safety standards and guides to help maintain a high level of safety at all nuclear installations and conducts missions to facilities and countries to assess the implementation of those safety and security documents. We also conduct conferences workshops training and other activities to assist our member states in keeping their facilities safe and secure. Next slide please. So you can see here the six major departments of the IAEA the one I am from is the highlighted one the nuclear safety and security department and that is what my presentation will focus on today. So next slide please. So the idea of harmonization of nuclear requirements is something that has been discussed for many years and there have been past initiatives on harmonization that although they produce useful outcomes did not achieve sufficient progress. But why is harmonization and standardization getting so much attention recently? Well for many reasons for example new deployment models for some reactor designs increased urgency in fighting climate change the desire for energy security and an increasing number of countries becoming interested in starting a nuclear power program. So the context around nuclear is changing. However harmonization efforts face important barriers for example allocation of resources and decision making regulatory harmonization is a big effort and will acquire resources and political will providing sufficient funding for the work can in many cases be outside the regulatory bodies authority. In some cases the regulatory body does not necessarily have the power to decide on the ultimate goals for nuclear and radiation safety and other governmental agencies must get involved. Furthermore changes in member states laws may have an impact on the national operating facilities and may be very difficult to agree on those changes. Second member states and the regulatory bodies may have obligations due to international laws or conventions. For example the members of the European Union must fulfill EU directives like the nuclear safety directive. Individual regulators do not have a lot of power to change those high level directives. Also societal acceptance of risks may be different in different member states. This may be reflected in the safety goals in other words in the accepted consequences of accidents. While all member states require nuclear plants to be safe the definition of safe may vary. And until now harmonization has really been essentially focusing on a minimum level of safety and then national authorities have often set more stringent requirements in their own countries. To ensure feasibility of SMRs the harmonization should address also the maximum level. In other words the regulator should agree on what is sufficient and commit to not set national requirements that exceed that agreed upon level except of course for consideration of local conditions like extreme weather or other natural phenomena. While this is possible it requires a different mindset than harmonizing to the minimum level of safety. And these are just some of the challenges. So next slide please. The nuclear harmonization and standardization initiative was announced by the IEA director general in 2002 in response to growing interest in advanced reactors especially SMRs. Although we know that complete harmonization and standardization would be challenging we believe that significant progress can be made towards that goal. Under NESI governments regulators designers operators and other international organizations will collaborate consistent with their national roles and responsibilities to harmonize and standardize regulatory and industrial approaches. So NESI has two tracks an industry track and a regulatory track and there is of course ongoing cooperation between those two tracks. The industry track has four topical groups which you can see on this slide here in the blue in the bottom harmonization of high level user requirements common approaches to codes and standards experiments and simulation code validation and acceleration of nuclear infrastructure implementation for SMRs. The regulatory track has three working groups and I'll talk more in detail about those in a moment. So the intent here of NESI is to enable regulators to carry out joint design reviews and maximize the use of other regulatory reviews resulting in minimal repetition among regulatory views by different member states minimal need for design changes arising from differences from member states regulations and establishment of a common basis for member states regulatory decisions while preserving their sovereignty. So next slide please. So the NESI launch meeting was successfully held in June 2022 with invited participants reaching consensus during the meeting on the general scope of this initiative and confirming their support. After the meeting I requested member states to send their nominations for each working group for the regulatory track membership is restricted to regulatory bodies except for working group one that has extended membership to other stakeholders needed for discussing the topics. Currently there are about 26 member state regulatory bodies participating in the regulatory track as well as the international organization of the nuclear energy agency. The timeline for this work is challenging because the objective is to get usable outputs from the working groups by the end of 2024. So kickoff meetings were held for each working group in October of 2022 and each working group has held several meetings since then. The working groups have defined their scope and developed in many cases a draft outline of the document that they would like to produce. The industry track is also progressing with meetings on a timeline that depends on the working group topics and an integration with their ongoing activities. The IEA has got their internal team in place to support NESI and additional resources are being applied. So next slide please. So this slide provides a little more detail about the plans. As I mentioned the first meetings for each working group were held in October 2022 and each working group plans to meet four times per year. Similar to the kickoff meeting for NESI that was held in June of last year, this June we plan to have another plenary meeting in Vienna to describe the progress that has been made and the current plans for moving forward. This meeting will be for both the regulatory track and the industry track together so that ideas and information can be shared among everyone. The outcomes of the work of the working groups will be captured in IEA publications such as tech docs. There will be one publication for each of the regulatory track working groups. The work plans currently extend through 2024 and whether NESI will continue beyond that will depend on the needs and interests of our member states. So now let me describe the goals of each of the working groups of the regulatory track. So next slide please. The objective of working group one is simple to enhance information sharing among regulators. So the general approach will consist of four steps, identify the information needs for regulators, identify the obstacles, identify the stakeholders needed to develop ways to overcome those obstacles and then figure out how to do that. So these information sharing needs may include information required for regulatory reviews, design information, safety analysis, or research results. And the obstacles relate to things that I'm sure many of you have dealt with such as trade secrets, security related information, import and export controlled information, or perhaps classified or safeguards information. So this work aims to enable the sharing of information among regulators during joint pre-licensing regulatory reviews or when leveraging other regulatory reviews as discussed in working groups two and three, which I'll talk about in one moment. And possible solutions could be restricted document repositories, legal agreements, access controls, or other collaboration tools. Next slide please. So working group two is focused on developing a voluntary process by which regulators present and share opinions for proposed reactor designs. The aim is to identify prior to national licensing technical issues that could subsequently raise potential difficulties or questions during the regulatory assessment and might require modifications of the design. The review is intended to give the vendor early feedback on its design choices and to indicate any possible so-called showstoppers that would need further analysis or even design changes to ensure the same design is licensible in different countries. We're not trying to develop a comprehensive set of design review criteria, but as a first step we'll try to identify topics that could potentially lead to identification of showstoppers and then develop guidance for reviewing the topics and expectations for acceptability. At an initial stage we'll focus on water cooled land-based SMRs and at a later stage aspects related to non-water cooled SMRs or transportable SMRs may be considered, but the scope of this work is already quite broad and challenging. So next slide please. Working group three is led by the SMR regulators forum which the NRC currently chairs and working group three's focus is on how to leverage the reviews of other regulators and how regulators can work together during ongoing regulatory reviews. It will consider scenarios that regulators may face when leveraging other regulatory reviews in terms of experience and maturity of regulators or differences in regulatory requirements. It will also consider the preconditions for leveraging other regulators reviews. For example, what needs to be in place in a country for regulators to be able to use other regulatory reviews. For example, should you spot check the decisions made by the other regulatory body, rerun some models, what is it that would be acceptable. Additionally, concurrent reviews will also be addressed. So the case where reviewers are working together on regulatory decisions, excuse me regulatory bodies are working together on regulatory decisions as opposed to simply adopting the decisions from another regulator. So next slide please. So although complete harmonization and standardization would be quite a big task, we believe we can move the needle on this topic in a substantive and meaningful way. Thereby enabling the timely deployment of safe and secure reactors. So thank you for your attention and I look forward to the discussion. Great. Thank you, Anna. Now we'll turn the floor to Marco for your presentation. Thank you very much, Dan. Good morning to you all. Thanks for introducing me, Dan. I'm not going to talk about the situation in the Netherlands where the government has announced to support to pave the way for building two large new builds and where we as a regulator are in early engagement with several industry partners for deployment of SMRs in the Netherlands. Instead, I'm going to present here what has been done in the European SMR pre-partnership so far. So this is the brief contents of my presentation. I'll start with the pre-partnership objectives. Then I'll focus on the licensing track and at the end I will be able to show the conclusions of the licensing track in the licensing work stream of this pre-partnership because the work of this pre-partnership is coming to an end and we hope to have the final report of all the work streams before the summer. So the European SMR pre-partnership, well the main goal of course is to prepare for a partnership. That's the goal of the pre-partnership. But the general objective, you can see it here, is to identify enabling conditions and constraints towards safe design, construction and operation of SMRs in Europe in the next decade and beyond in compliance with the European legislative framework. And here you see three specific objectives that were formulated at the start of this pre-partnership to develop the necessary industrial supply chain in Europe. The second is to encourage the implementation of harmonized licensing process across the EU. I think now we would formulate it differently. I will talk about it later. This is rather enthusiastic and maybe unrealistic goal for the moment. And the third is to establish a strategic research agenda, both for the Lightwater SMRs to be deployed from 2030 onwards as well as for the advanced SMRs to be deployed later. So this is the structure of the pre-partnership. It's a partnership gathering different actors. So there are four parties in this pre-partnership. The first is Nuclear Europe, the nuclear industry in Europe. The second is the Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technology Platform, that's the R&D platform of the industry in Europe. Then there is the N-Track, as was already said by then, that's the advisory committee of nuclear safety regulators to the European Commission. So all the regulators of all member states in the European Union are a member of this. And then finally there's the European Commission. So these four organizations are within the steering group and I have the honor to represent N-Track in the steering group of this pre-partnership and the work has been performed in five different work streams and you see that on the right. So there's a work stream that focuses on the market analysis in Europe for future deployment of SMRs. A work stream looking at the financial instruments to support SMR deployment, the work stream on licensing, I will talk about that extensively. Then the supply chain adaptation work stream to see what hurdles need to be overcome to have a sustainable supply chain for SMRs in Europe. And then finally the work stream on research development and innovation that both looks at research and development roadmap that is needed both for the market and for the licensing aspects and also to education and training. So the objective of the work stream of licensing is mentioned here that is to identify the elements for establishing a European pre-licensing process based on the commonly accepted safety assessment from different NDRAC members interested in licensing the same SMR design. So in this work stream we have regulators from 15 European countries and an industry initiative and two main activities have been to establish a clear state of play of the activities in this work stream in connection in relation to other fora like the NSEE trajectory for regulators that are not just described but also at NEA and et cetera. And the second activity, main activity is to develop a common understanding on the licensing processes in the different EU countries for SMR licensing. So on this slide you see what we found is a key for cooperation. I think that for the licensing process itself it is quite similar in Europe on one hand and on the other hand it has already been mentioned several times there is a sovereign responsibility for the states to do the authorization in the licensing process. So this cannot lead to international certification or reciprocal recognition of authorizations issued by different safety authorities. On the high level of course we have common safety requirements that have been established in different frameworks the IAA framework and also for Europe the WENRA safety reference levels that's built on the experiments of what is already implemented. And in Europe we've generally got a prescriptive framework so that's indicated in the picture on the right side, the upper right side so we prescribe that the trousers should remain on and we do not prescribe with two independent ways but we do not prescribe which ways. So that is I think already harmonized but then because we have this prescriptive framework the differences start to appear in how we as different regulators we assess the demonstration of the compliance with those requirements. And there there's the main part for further cooperation for harmonization of different SMRs that we deployed in Europe. So here is a list of the main conclusions of the licensing work stream what is key for cooperation. First is it's important to have this definition of commonly shared safety objectives for SMRs between the EU nuclear safety regulators where they are interested or where SMRs might be deployed. Second is to have an agreement on the definition of what is the sufficient level of maturity for an SMR designer or applicant, future licensee to engage joint safety pre-assessment. Third is to define to have a definition of the possible options and conditions for another regulator or licensee to join the pre-assessment at a later stage so that I think that is in conjunction with the working group three of NACI. Then of course it is very important to have a close collaboration between the different initiatives launched on SMRs at an international level to ensure mutual benefits and avoid duplication. And the final point is to have a collaboration between regulatory bodies in the EU and the research organizations to get a common understanding of the challenges related to SMRs key features. So these are important points to take on board for the partnership if it is launched. So this is the... I would like to conclude with this slide. So for the European SMR partnership to be established from a regulatory perspective there are three main points to take into account. So the first one that has been mentioned during Rick I think several times to engage in early dialogue between the designers, licensees, future applicants and on the one hand regulators on the other hand on the main elements of the design options when the design options are still open. The second is to promote the cooperation of interested regulators to carry out and join safety pre-assessment of a mature design or what I just mentioned. So this is in connection with I think working group two with NASA a similar way of working or having mechanisms to join later in a joint assessment to make use of the work that has been done there. And the third is to identify at an early stage at a conceptual design stage the main difference in the safety requirements and licensing processes in the EU member states a view of finding convergencies in avoiding potential blocking points at a later stage. So really identify at an early stage whether conversions should be needed at certain points and start that also at an early stage. So with that I would like to conclude my presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you, Margo. Marco. At this point we'll go to our virtual presenter Petri Tipena in Finland. Petri, the floor is yours. Thank you, Chair. And good morning. I hope you can hear me well. Yes, quite well. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to join online. And sorry for not being able to be there in person. That was the purpose. But anyhow, I'm very pleased to brief you about the work that we are conducting together with our French colleagues from ASN and colleagues from CJP, from Czechia on this new art SMR design. And let's try if the slides change from here. No, yes. Thank you. So this is just to give you an overview. And I think we already heard from Anna and Marco about the some international activities that we have ongoing. And I think, as we know, there is quite a lot of those. And I think we could categorize those in two groups. One is these, I would call, upper-level technology neutral activities that we have ongoing within the IAENSC that Anna just presented and Marco on the European SMR pre-partnership program. And then, of course, the OECD-NEA also has some specific activities on new reactors, safety and licensing. Then the other category is more design-specific activities that we have in place. We have the MDEB ongoing almost 20 years. Has been focusing on large reactors. And then we have the bilaterals as the chair just presented, the one between the NRC and the CNSC. And then multilateral cooperation between regulators. And I think this joint review, joint early review on what falls into that category. Just a brief background on this work that we are conducting. This started with the initiative from the EDF. And EDF is the French utility. And they have been developing this SMR design called Nuvard. And they wanted to contact regulators from countries in which there is some interest within the utilities on this Nuvard design. And with that, ASN, STUK and SJP started to work together. And I will speak about the goals in a minute. But anyway, before going there, I think the reference basis that you can see on the bottom of the slide is very broad. We are using our national regulations in the review IAES guidelines and safety standards, vendor safety objectives and reference levels in addition to that, our knowledge and practices that we have gained. About the goals itself for us as regulators and for the vendor. I think the first thing that is a goal is for us regulators to get familiar with a SMR design. So it has an educational role for us. The other thing is, I think Anna and Mark also mentioned this, is to identify potential challenges. I think Anna used the expression showstoppers that the design might raise prior to its licensing process. And I would like to add, it's not only be safety issues on the design, but it could also be regulatory issues. For instance, our tools and capabilities or requirements or regulatory practices may not be applicable for a design. And I think this is also a goal for us to identify such before entering into the licensing. Then to share our expectations, knowledge, practices on a selected topics. And then with that increased knowledge transfer about our practices, regulations, expectations, differences and with this better understand reasons for those. And for the vendor, this is a possibility to receive early and I like to highlight this early in regulatory feedback on its design and possible associated regulatory challenges. And not only from one country, but from additional foreign countries. And these are the topics we have been working on. There are six topics. I'm not going into the details of those, but any, maybe to elaborate on the criteria behind the topics. There are few of them. First of all, the topics needs to have safety significance. The second one is design significance. And with that, I mean that the topics that we have selected are such that really are significant from design point of view. In other words, it would be really difficult, costly, challenging to make the design changes later on in the process. Then the other criteria is novelty novel features for which there might be not that much regulatory experience or standards or safety criteria. And then, as you can see, safety demonstration tools and capabilities. And then maybe some generic criteria is to have a design maturity and with that, a documentation for review. Process itself is fairly simple. EDF provides the documents. Then the experts from three countries gets together and reviews the documents, provides feedback to the EDF based on the feedback. A draft report is prepared. And after EDF's feedback, the reports are finished. For the time being, we have reports available for the first three topics on the list. We are working on the next two draft reports and then the one on the work on the PSA or PRA is ongoing. Then some preliminary insights from this joint early review. And these are not yet joint insights. These are from STUK. And I think first one is timeliness of such a review. And I think this is the key from many respects. As I said, this is the goal is to identify safety issues or regulatory issues before we enter the licensing process in which it would be bluntly said too late to identify and create risks for all of us. So timeliness, so it should not be too early because the design may not be mature enough for a review and not too late because then it would be too late to make significant changes if those would be the case. And I think with the MDEP process, we were a little bit too late because in that platform, we started to review the designs together when the licensing process was ongoing. And as I said, that's too late. It's difficult to make changes when contracts have been made and the licensing is ongoing. The other thing here is that this is a very, very effective way to learn from the design and without the applicability of regulations and regulatory practices that we have in place. We are in a process in Finland to renew fully our nuclear legislation and red guides. And this work that we are conducting now on this design really helps us identify how, well, the current thinking applies to new designs and what needs to be changed. And the third one here is, for me, the most interesting one is whether we should internationally harmonize the requirements or harmonize the designs. We speak quite a lot about harmonizing the requirements with A-goal to have harmonized designs. But I have these two observations on the slides here and based on the findings from this joint early reviews. We have differences in our requirements between ASN-STUK and ZUJB. But still our experts say that the design meets the intent of the requirements. Then we have similar requirements of the interpretation among the three regulators is different. So with that, as I said, this is preliminary. But I think that we should put more effort working on the designs than working on the requirements. There is a place for harmonizing the requirements as well. But the goal should be harmonized designs, safe harmonized designs. And I think we will achieve that result more efficiently and effectively by working on the designs rather than working on through the requirements. So more to be learned and shared. But I think this joint early review on what we are doing is a good pilot and good support when we have the learnings and experience documented as well. We'll support both Nessie and the EU SMR-PRE partnership programs. And with that, I stop back to you then. OK. Thank you very much, Petteri. And finally, we will turn the microphone to Krister. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Dan. And good morning to everyone. And thank you to NRC for inviting me to join this panel. I'll put my first slide. So it's up there. We're not seeing his slide here. Maybe we can switch the slide, please. OK. So this is maybe not the first one. Yeah, go back to the beginning of there. Yes. So this is the title of the presentation. It's the UAE Republic of Korea cooperation in the field of nuclear regulation. So I'm going to give you a practical example of what I call a novel approach to licensing, which builds on some of the elements we have heard about. But we have really gone through this process in a very systematic way and shown together with our Korean colleagues that this approach is working. And I think it will work with any nuclear technology that you want to establish in a new country or an established country. So let me first say that UAE or Abu Dhabi, it's an interesting country. It's a hot environment. It's distinct features. So this is on one side, we have extensive deserts, this extensive dunes, which are very beautiful. On the other side, we have this very big contrast between the previous. But in 300 kilometers from that beautiful environment that I showed last, we have built this Baraka nuclear power plant. Today we have successfully licensed all four reactors, three for operation. So three are already in full operation. The reactor number four is about to get operational. We have the operating license application on our table. We are reviewing it, and we hope to issue an operating license at the end of this year. So this reactor, and this picture is important, it's not a new reactor really. It's a reactor that is built and based on previous designs. The Combustion Engineering 80 plus design that was developed in the USA and licensed by NRC. So this is one thing. It's licensed by NRC. It was bought and developed by the Republic of Korea. It developed into what is called OPR-1000. And there are several of those reactors in operation in Korea. Then it was developed further into APR-1400. And that reactor was being built in Korea as before the Baraka plant was built, which is an important concept. So we have this reference plant concept with a very stable background licensed by two famous regulators already. And then this was the background for us and for me at the regulatory authority. So as I said, first on the right, on the corner up, you can see the country. We have different colors. There are different, it's the federation comprising seven emirates, and they are in different colors. So the Baraka nuclear power plant is located in the biggest emirates, which has the same name as the capital, Abu Dhabi. And the distance between Abu Dhabi city and Baraka is 300 kilometers. It's towards the Saudi Arabian border. It's located on the shore, so the reactors are cooled by seawater. And in the bottom, you can see the dates. So they have come online from 21, then the second 22, and the third one in commercial operation last month and hopefully the reactor for next year. It all started. It's quite a fast-moving project, I would say. I came to Abu Dhabi in 2008, and we had this paper in front of us, the policy of the United Arab Emirates on the evaluation and potential development of peaceful nuclear energy. This document contains the direction from the government on what they expected from us as a regulator, as the industry, as training institution, or other concerned stakeholders in the area of nuclear power. It talked about the main principles, which should be transparency to the public, to the international community. It talks about using IAEA and conform to its standards, and which we have used, the same with the security guidance, and complying with the safeguard obligation, including the additional protocol that was signed in 2009 as well. So this is an important document, and this is the expectations from the program. So one year after this policy paper was issued, in September 2009, the regulatory authority got its name, Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation. We got our mandate in a law from September of 2009. And we have also the responsibility to regulate the medical sector, the use of radiation in the medical sector, in the drastical sector, and in research and development in the academia. So our mission is to protect the public, the workers, and the environment from harmful effects of ionizing radiation. So the start of the UAE ROK cooperation. So in December 2009, the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation contracted KEPCO of the Republic of Korea to build four reactors. And we also had the government concluding a government to government agreement. And also we, based on this government agreement, we concluded several implementing arrangements with Korean authorities. We started with KINS, the Nuclear Safety Regulator, in 2010. In parallel, we also contacted KINAC, which is the regulator for safeguards and security. Because it's important to consider when you use this approach that nuclear regulation is not only nuclear safety. The other aspects needs to be developed in parallel. And then when the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission of Korea was established in 2011, we also concluded an agreement with them. We had a special agreement with KINS of sending a secondment to stay and work with us in our office, in order to help the cooperation between the two countries. We also concluded an MOU with the Research Institute in Korea, which we also utilize. So the question is how this cooperation supports the licensing process. The approach we used is the, we call it the use of the country of origin approach. And I will explain a little bit more. So as I explained from the beginning, the reference plant for Baraka is located in close to Busan in Republic of Korea. It's called Shin Korea 3 and 4. Now there is a new name, Seoul 1 and 2. And this was the first plant using the APR-14 technology. And this experience that all the Korean partners could bring from the same identical essential construction and commissioning process, which successfully was done there, was of great value to us on the vendor side and the operator side and on the regulatory side. So we started to get the periodic, or the PSAR, Preliminary Safety Analysis Report. The license application was filed to us in December of 2010, one year after the contract. So we started to work with Kinz and learned how they had reviewed the license or licensed the Shin Korea 3 and 4. We did, the reactors were essentially identical, but there were some changes because of the environmental or local conditions. So we of course conducted a general overview of the plant based on the PSAR, but we focused, and this was I think the important thing, we could leverage the resources of Kinz and then in parallel focus on what was specific for UAE. So I have them in more details here. Site characteristics, for example, from external events, from the heat, from the salinity and dust, et cetera, was important for us to understand very well the seismic risk, the tsunami risk, et cetera. And we also went into detail on the fuel system designs onto the steam generator, materials in particular, reactor coolant pumps, pumps were in general cooling pumps, were in general bigger, and on the containment system, and other specific things like severe accident. So for the nuclear safety, we had a very, very close cooperation with Kinz. They came for workshop, we sent delegations to Kinz, and we joined them in inspections, et cetera, and we had this secondment at Fanner. And all these licensing documents of Kinz were translated into English, and we got them, and we could learn and try to understand. We realized that the regulations were different, but as Petteri said recently, we didn't try to harmonize the regulation. We worked on the design, and that was successful. So we cooperated in many, many areas, and I need to go a little bit quicker. As I said, safeguard and export import control is important as well. So we have cooperated now more than 10 years with them on that. And as Anna mentioned, the confidential information was, of course, a challenge, but we managed to solve it with good cooperation with the Korean authorities. We have developed some joint papers together with our Korean colleagues, and presented one to the safe caution posseum last year, for example. We have done similar things in physical protection, as you can see at the last point on this slide, on the physical protection for transportation of fresh nuclear fuel from Korea to Baraka. We presented that at an IEA conference as well. R&D, we are in the present state of cooperating with Kairi on several projects, and we have established something called Emirates Nuclear Energy Nuclear Technology Center, NTECH, and where we work now on Accident Tolerant Fuel for APR 1400. We work on prediction of degradation of concrete structure in this harsh environment of the UAE. In education and training, same. We have experts from our side sent to Korea for training. Some of them speak fluently Korean, by the way, which is also helpful in the interaction. So in sort of a summary, it's a very systematic process that you need to go through if you are out to rely on this approach. Strong formal cooperation agreements are needed, and you need to interact very, very closely between the two regulators, or several regulators. You need to make sure you understand the regulatory framework very well before you can use this approach of the two countries. And you have to have access to all the licensing documents of the country of origin regulators. This journey doesn't end with licensing. We are embarking on the next step of cooperation with our Korean colleagues, which is regulatory oversight. It's a secondment program that will continue operating experience program. We will have 10 APR 1400 reactors in operation in some years. So we will create a regulator forum between them. We continue with capacity building. We will do joint studies, and we will do R&D together. So in conclusion, the cooperation has resulted in a very strong network, in a very good cooperation, and a trust. I think building trust between two regulators in this way is part of the success. Thank you. Thank you, Christopher. I thank you to all of the panelists for very comprehensive and concise presentations we have time for a number of questions. Let me start with one that was directed to me, but I'll open it up to the panel as well. The question is, are there efforts being made to expand the NRC CNSC cooperation to include further countries? Are other regulators able to use the results of the work for their own reviews or otherwise expedite their work? And I'll say for the Canadian and CNSC memorandum of cooperation, there is interest from other countries in the work we're doing on the BWRX-300. And we're exploring ways to best share the information in the work that we're doing. I think part of it is our experience, this works best when we have a technology that's being provided, that's being developed for application in both of the participating countries on a relatively concurrent time frame. And so there may be opportunities for other countries better to come in using Track 3, the regulatory track, using the experience that Krister has just described to learn from the work that we're doing as opposed to coming alongside. So I think it's a question of what's going to be the most efficient way to get to the ultimate end point to get a shared technical view on the design that can then be communicated to nth of a kind, if you will, applications. Petri, I wanted to see what your thoughts were on that, from your experience to date on new art and what would be the challenges of bringing an additional country into the discussion versus what you have the ability to hand off what you have done later in the process. Thanks, Dan, for the question. I know that there are two or three countries who would like to join the work that we are doing on New Art with ASN and SWEJP. And I think there is possibility to join, but it's up to EDF and the French, since they are the owners of the project in a way to decide how and when. But certainly we would be open to let other countries to join. And I think time-wise, this is still a perfect timing to join. This was just the first phase that we had on the six topics, and I do think that this will continue on these areas and others. I think the key is how do we document the results so that they are useful for us and for other countries who have not joined or are not able to join the work so that the documentation is deep enough, accurate enough to be used by a country who has not been participating in the work. And that's something that I think we have to think and see when the documents and reports are ready. Thank you. Thanks, Petter. You mentioned EDF, and in my remarks I noted that our decisions on projects under our MOC are a joint decision of the two regulators, but also the vendor who's coming to us. I think it's also a question for the vendor, the prospective applicant of how many regulators they want to deal with at once. Any other thoughts on that? Next question for Anna. There's been much discussion about the need for a global marketplace for SMRs. Do you foresee an enhanced role for IAEA to promote norms and expectations and drive harmonization among the regulations to enable this perhaps similar to the International Civil Aviation Organization? Thanks, Dan. Yes, and I think that's what Nessie is working towards. Can we, there's regulators doing work like this in a bilateral or trilateral way, but can the IAEA be sort of a force multiplier for that and bring in more resources and direction and assistance to expand it to more countries which in effect would affect the marketplace that would be affected for SMRs? Thanks. Thanks, Anna. Marco, looking at your work in the broad EU framework, there are members of the EU who have turned away from nuclear power or have not been supportive of nuclear power. What do they have a role in this conversation or how do they factor into the discussions here? Well, thank you for that question, Dan. I think that's a specific feature of Europe, indeed, that we have a large diversity and it's all combined in the European Union. In ENSREC, all these member states are represented. So also in the regulatory work stream, there are different member states represented. Then we see that the most active members in that work stream are from the countries where there are initiatives or there are plans to deploy SMRs in the near or far future. I think from a regulator's perspective, that's always good to have all these European regulators on board because regulators are neutral and we make sure that the designs meet the requirements in Europe. So I don't think that's really an issue. Of course, for the European Union to stimulate the development for SMRs, that's a different story, right? So that will be a major goal of the partnership. So we will finish this pre-partnership, I think, in June with the stakeholders forum. Then all the results will be presented and then we will sort out and the European Commission with all the partners involved, sort out how to establish the partnership itself and how to proceed on that. Thank you, Marco. Petri, in your trilateral review, are the regulators finding common ground in areas where the regulatory frameworks are different? You talked about the requirements being different but the design perhaps being the same. Do you expect that this will result in a standard new art design that will be acceptable in all three countries? I think that's the goal, at least, to aim for. But of course, time will tell whether that goal will be achieved. Plenty of I just want to highlight the timing aspect here. The EDF is in a conceptual phase of its design. This is really the time and place to have the regulatory impact on the design. That's one thing to make sure that at the later stage that the safety design, safety engineering doesn't result in a showstopper-wise. Then the other aspect is to identify regulatory showstoppers. As said, in Finland, for instance, we have requirements which are not applicable, binding requirements which are not applicable for SMRs as such due to partly our prescriptive regulations. And this is the time to identify those as well and then make them more applicable without decreasing the level of safety. It's just how you, what kind of regulatory framework you create. And in that respect, I do see benefits and potential for this design or other designs to be more straightforwardly reviewed and approved in Finland, at least, maybe in the other countries that are joining as well. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. Christopher, a question on your interactions with Kin's NNSC. Did Fenner ever diverge from the Korean position on the opinion of the safety level of aspects of the generic APR 1400 design? Or did you effectively accept and adopt all of Kin's opinions on the design from the country of origin? So as I already said, we understood very well the requirements of our Korean colleagues. But of course, in order to approve the design, they had to follow our requirements. I think there was no need to go into detail, try to influence or they influenced us. No, they just explained how they had done it, what regulatory requirements exist in Korea. We understood this. In some parts of the licensing, we said, no, we need to make an independent assessment. But always the target was always to fulfill the regulations of Fenner, which is very essential, of course, that we don't compromise on those aspects. I think that feeds well into the next question, which is addressed to all of the panelists. As countries such as Estonia, Indonesia, Kenya, or Poland ramp up an almost entirely new nuclear regulatory framework, what advice would you give to best take advantage of regulatory harmonization? You want to start that? In terms of embarking countries in general, there's a lot of ways, at least that the IEA can help. We do a lot of capacity building when it comes to building regulatory bodies, ability to do reviews and their technical competence. We do a lot of information sharing with peers. We could do peer reviews and come in and give you feedback on what needs to be improved. I would think there's so many options available for embarking countries like that. I would just say, take advantage of those because they can be really helpful and can truly make a difference. Well, thank you. The Netherlands is not an embarking country. So we have one NPP, but then there is also, so we are a small country, nuclear-wise, and also a relatively small regulator. For another nuclear installation, medical isotope production facility, a shine that is further in development in the US here, there are plans also to deploy an installation in the Netherlands. And there, what we did as a relatively small regulator was to have a cooperation, a memorandum of understanding with NRC, and we are currently looking at that specific design and learning from NRC how they did the safety assessment. So I think it's very important also to focus on specific design and then collaborate with more experienced regulators on that so that you really go into the matter and not stay at the requirement level. Yes, on a similar line, I think we were very careful not to establish two detailed regulations. So you all know the regulatory requirement or the, sorry, safety requirements of the IEA. That type of language is used in Fanner regulations, which is, I would call performance-based. We put the performance goal and then the licensee or the license applicant can come and discuss various types of solutions. The second type, second topic is to work closely with the country of origin, particularly the regulator of the country of origin, but probably because probably another country has already licensed the design. It would be hard for a newcomer countries to get the first of a kind design. I would not advise for that. Thirdly, use the good part of the IEA. IEA has very many good features, not only the safety standards, but also the advisory services. We used advisory services several times. As you know, Fukushima happened and we were in the middle of the construction license application. So we did enhancements based on stress test analysis similar to the ENSREG approach in various areas and they introduced and they were put as license conditions for the operating license. So before we issued the construction license for unit one and two, we invited an IEA advisory service on site assessment because we wanted the confirmation from the international community that our assessment of the site was in accordance with best practices and this group spent one or two weeks in our offices, went through all the documents and made some recommendations to us before we issued the license to ENEC. This was a very strong, we have done the same for the operator certification process. We did the same for what is needed in order for a country to issue an operating license. We asked a safe expert group to come and advise us. They said, you need first of all to review the application and prepare a well-documented SCR. Secondly, you need an inspection program that make sure that they have built the reactor according to the specification. Thirdly, you need an operating organization that is ready to operate safely the power plant. Those three documents and then you summarize this to your board of management in a well easily understood language. And this is exactly the approach we have used. Thank you, Christopher. Petri, you wanna add it to this? No, I don't think I have anything to add. I think the previous speakers have said most important things. Yeah, good. Thank you. I like to phrase that Christopher used in his presentation, famous regulators. I think the key is first to work with the IAEA infrastructure and build that regulatory infrastructure. And so in that sense, Christopher talked about the famous regulators in the context of a specific design, but I think you don't need to be a design-specific relationship. I think finding a good experienced regulator as a partner in helping you build that infrastructure and then other partnerships in developing the design. Based on the presentations from Anna and Marco, it seems that the main goals of the second working, second track of the working group under Nessie and of the work stream licensing are very similar. What actions are being taken to exchange, share the outcomes in order to avoid duplication and optimize the efforts? Thanks. Let me go for, okay. I will say first of all, that's true. There are some similarities and we are well aware of that. I think we communicate pretty often. There's other activities as well that have some similarities, but they have different audiences and slightly different intents. In my opinion, it's good to have more groups working on these same things. The more resources and the more ideas and the more people that are trying to think of the best way to do something, I think is a good thing. Of course you don't wanna waste resources doing duplication, so each organization would have to decide for themselves where do I wanna spend my resources, would it be here, would it be there, where would that be? But I think it's the constant communication and awareness that keeps us from being too duplicative. But I think there is some overlap. What do you think, Marco? Well thank you, not really a lot to add to that. And I think for the European pre-partnership, I think we learn more specific items on the differences and similarities in the different EU countries. But then again, I think we, as you already said, there's a lot of communication going on and we certainly choose what type of work that we do in the pre-partnership and because that is specific for what we want to do in the European track and what kind of work will be done in Nessie and we will make use of that work in Nessie. I mean the partnership that will be established will focus on specific designs. So that is, I think, where the differences come. In the pre-partnership phase, we did mainly analysis and then in the partnership phase that will focus on specific designs and I think that will differ from the IAEA approach. All right, thank you. Petteri, the multi-regulator early engagement with the New Art is a fascinating initiative. Can this be scaled up to allow similar engagement with multiple SMR or Advanced Reactor Developers? New Art is obviously just one of many. Thank you. Maybe Anna and Marco could respond to this as well because I think that this could be scaled up and the lessons that we are learning from this early joint review is as I think I said is really valuable for both the EU activities and Nessie activities. Yes, but it's a timing issue. As you said also, Dan, for this design, this is good timing, but we have regulators that come later on interested on the design and I think we should find a way how such regulators that might see this or other design on their radar but longer away could still join and engage to build trust on what we are doing. I see three regulators so that they trust that what has been done can be used. So I think it could be scaled up, but I think there could be another model as well how to engage other regulators to the work, not with a full use of resources, but less resources with a goal that they are engaged, they gain trust on what is being done and they get information as well. That's the idea, I don't know if I responded to the question directly, but maybe Anna and Marco have some thoughts on this as well and Krista of course. Thanks, Petteri. Yeah, I agree. I think it could be scaled up. There would of course be challenges as the group got larger and larger. There's just more differences in your national regulations, more things to address, but I think the idea of it could certainly be optimized. Maybe more than three is optimized, but maybe 30 would be very difficult, but that's something that I think the Nessie working group two and three, I think that's one aspect of something that they'll be thinking about. I don't really have to add something to that. I think we're looking, I think, at Nessie and what is happening there to get the mechanisms in place of how you scale that up and then apply that in practice in the European context in the partnership. Thanks. Yes, so two comments. One on, we also took part in MDEP by the way and worked with USNRC and the KINs and initially also we'd stuck on certain aspects, topical aspects of the APR 1400 design. This was a very useful experience as well and all these documents are available on the openly available. Secondly, on the IEA initiative, we support that initiative because we believe that it's important in the long term to try to find more harmonized licensing approaches. In the short term, we have to work in other constellations bilaterally or trilaterally because we have a need to go forward with the licensing. But on the long term, I think the results of the IEA work certainly would be of interest, but we need to make sure that we interact closely with the industry. I think that's needs to maybe probably be enhanced so we get direct interaction between the regulator and the industry to find out directly from them where the problems are. Thank you. A few minutes left here. Are there efforts underway to harmonize environmental reviews? That's pointed to Anna, but I think the second half until leverage environmental reviews conducted in countries of origin or other countries. And I wonder if Christopher would comment on that in their interactions with Korea. I think you can harmonize the process of how to do environmental reviews. What are the types of things that need to be looked at? I don't know that you could ever take an environmental review from one country and make it applicable in another country unless they happen to have very specific or very similar seismic activity and weather and susceptibility to hurricanes. Maybe some plants designed to bounding conditions for natural phenomena. And if each country that that reactor design was going to go to fit within that bounding condition, maybe you could do slightly less of the environmental reviews. But I think there would almost always be some site specific work you would need to do there. And of course, every country has different laws and requirements for the environment reviews, NEPA and the US, but it's very different in different countries. Yes, I agree completely with Anna. So in our case, the environmental part was so different between the environment outside Jinco replants and our, we have the Arabian Gulf with a very shallow, shallow sea on our side. And we had to do this ourselves. And we engage with international experts. So what I didn't mention in my presentation was in addition to KINS, we use international technical support organizations in the beginning because we were very small. And part of the PSAR is of course on environmental impact assessment. And that was reviewed by experts from various European countries in particular, which helped us to make sure that this site was suitable, but we had to make alterations of course, site or elevations of the plant, for example, to prevent from flooding was done. And of course we work closely with the experts in UAE, namely the environmental agencies. And they are very well aware of the sensitivity of the environment because of the oil explorations. Thank you. Thank you, Krister. One last question coming to you, Krister. You talked about building trust between FANR and the Korean regulators. And I wonder if you could share some more ideas on how FANR built trust with the country of origin and advice for others considering a similar project. Yes, it's an important topic because our culture was different, our languages was different. So it takes an effort, but it was a determination behind both parties. And I would like to thank the Korean colleagues for this. We were determined to succeed. So we had many, many discussions, technical discussions between experts and also on higher level on how to do that. We shared the information, the information flow successively became more and more easy. We had this secondment of Kin staff in our offices, which helped a lot in this trust-building exercise. So there is, I mean, there is no easy answer to this. It's a long-term project that needs to have the full support from the leadership of both countries. Thank you, Krister. We're coming to the conclusion of our time together. I wanna thank our audience for very active engagement. I wanna thank you all for your participation in the RIC. This is the conclusion of the Regulatory Information Conference for 2023. I hope it's been very fruitful for you all. As I said at the outset, we welcome your feedback. If you're in the session in the app, there should be a feedback tab where you can give us feedback or you can access the RIC website to give us feedback both on this session and on the RIC in general. So thank you all for your participation. We wish you a safe onward journey. And I'd like to ask your support, to give thanks one more time to our panelists for their participation. Thank you.