 So, welcome everybody to the Session T5 Advancing Small Modular Reactor Safety through Global Collaboration, International Research and Regulatory Research. I think we'll be showing the QR code throughout the presentation, so everybody, I would ask that you submit your questions throughout the session using the QR code, and folks online there's, you can submit your questions as well. Again, welcome, I'm Ray First and now I'm the Acting Executive Director for Operations here at the NRC, and I'll be the Chair for this session. And we're really fortunate to have the group we have here, I'll do just brief introductions, their bios are in the website, but our first speaker will be Andrew Moriel, he's a Technical Manager for the Reactor Safety at the Canadian Nuclear Labs. And then after Andrew will be Eric Thornsbury, and he's the Technical Lead for EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute on Risk Analysis, Methods and Tools for Advanced Reactors, I'll be his topic, and Vesalina Rangelova, and I've been fortunate for the last several years to work with Vesalina on CSNI, and Director General Magwood's here, and I got to tell you, Vesalina never gives us any slack on getting things done, so I appreciate her efforts. And then after Vesalina, our own Steve Bajorek who works in the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research here at the NRC. So the way it will work is I'll ask each panelist to come up with their presentation, and if there's time after the presentation, we may ask one or two questions of the panelists dependent on the time, we don't make sure every panelist has time to speak, and so if we don't have time after the panelists, we're going to have time at the end to ask questions of the panelists as well. So I guess I don't want to spend any more time up here. This is an important topic I can tell by the participation here. I guess I have to divert in the past, Rick, I've always been on the last day and it's always been a struggle for the number of participants, but it looks like we've got a pretty full house today, so I appreciate your attending, and I hope you'll enjoy the sessions. So with that, Andrew, we're going to start with you. Please welcome Andrew Moriel. Thank you very much, Ryan, put this here so it doesn't fly off the edge there. Okay, so I've got the little slide in answer here. Ah, I'll just go back one. So I want to thank you very much for attending, and I'm really glad to talk to you today, and I'm just here to give you a flavor of some of the international efforts that Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is involved in related to small modular reactor safety and our advanced reactor efforts there. So CNL, if you might remember back, is basically the child of ACL. So Atomic Energy of Canada Limited was one large corporation, and now it's a contract management company, and CNL does all the work. So we're here as the national lab for Canada, and our main goals are to meet our commitments to Canadians and support environmental stewardship, clean energy, and public health, and this is really helping us confront the challenges of the 21st century using the great science and research that we've been using at the lab since we started back in the Manhattan days in the 1940s. There's three main missions at the lab. Obviously we're looking to restore and protect our environment, the clean energy for today and tomorrow, and this is where we'll be spending most of our time here, and then talking about improving the health of Canadians. So before I get into the international cooperation, I want to let you know about the landscape of small modular reactors in Canada and why Canada is so involved in a lot of these international efforts is because of this demand and this interest in Canada. So some of the reasons why there is interest is we have some very solid government support coming from the federal government's roadmap for SMRs and an action plan. We have a very flexible regulator that's working very hard to be able to address any kinds of designs that are coming towards them. They have vendor design reviews, they have performance-based regulation, and we have really the demand for it. So you can see my little map over here. We've got demand in mining and industry for process heat, hydrogen or electricity. We've got remote communities that are looking for microwave actors. We've got desires for different provinces for new grid power to have some more low-carbon energy, and we have a lot of different designs, but every one of them has a demand space in Canada. So we have three major streams. You may have heard of Ontario Power Generation that's looking at the BWRX300. They've committed to build four units. It's the Darlington plant just outside of Toronto. SASC Power is also looking into the BWRX300, and recently Capital Power from Alberta has been talking and partnering with OPG to look at SMRs in that market as well. There's also outside of the water-cooled systems, there's advanced reactors that are being pursued out in New Brunswick with the Moltex stable salt reactor and the ARC100, which is a sodium-fast reactor design. And then moving down into the microspaces, there's a lot of interest at our site in the ultra-safe nuclear corporations micro-modular reactor that Global First Power is looking to build. And while it's not on the slide, it's been very recently that the Saskatchewan Research Council is talking very heavily with Westinghouse regarding their eVinci design and deploying that in Saskatchewan. So there's a lot of interest in Canada for these technologies, and that's why we're seeing ourselves in a lot of international efforts related to SMRs. So CNL itself has a lot of programs because we're here to support the government's decisions at the federal level in Canada and really advance clean energy technologies to support Canadians. So we have a couple of different funding streams, including our federal nuclear science and technology stream, which is government-funded there. It's directed by many different factions of the federal government in Canada and allows us to really push for building a framework for SMR deployment and development. We have a Canadian Nuclear Research Initiative. This is a bit of a way for commercial companies to come and work with the lab together on common goals forward. And we have our demonstration sightings. So this is the Global First Power is looking to the site at Chalk River, and others are in discussions to see if they could benefit from sighting a prototype up at one of our sites either at Chalk River or in one of our other sites like at White Shell in Manitoba. We have our Clean Energy Demonstration Innovation and Research Initiative, which is a lot more eloquently packaged as CEDR, and this one is really looking at understanding energy parks and how they work together. And then, of course, we have a large effort maintaining and looking at the new builds for our current fleet of Kandu reactors and potential other large reactors that are being looked into. So there's a lot of stuff going on at the lab. Within my area at the Advanced Reactors Directorate, there's a lot of work in here. I won't go into it in too much detail, but you can see we do a wide variety of things, and they're all under those different funding programs. So materials and chemistry, nuclear fuels, reactor safety where I live, energy systems, and then this is all underpinned by our efforts in advanced codes and modeling and frameworks. This is a bit of a wordy slide, but really it's pointing out that we have a robust technical program that's supporting our SMR research and really it's benefiting from our decades of experience with Kandu, and we want to investigate areas of interest to make sure that SMR deployment is done safely. So we're identifying gaps and phenomena that we need to know. We're understanding where we need to build experimental capabilities and identifying ways to generate the data we need to validate the codes to ensure that we have safe operations of these new reactor designs. Our programs are initially started out quite agnostic, being able to look at any design and are now, by necessity, they're focusing in on those designs that are getting nearer and nearer to deployment. And the biggest point, and the point of course, this panel is the international involvement. So CNL is generally, along with the CNSC, the point organizations for international engagement, especially in the areas of nuclear safety. So I'm going to highlight a couple of these efforts that are going on within different organizations. There's other things going on as well. These are just some good highlights so you can see some of the breadth of work that's going on. Within efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency, CNL has been involved with the Cooperative Research Project on Emergency Planning Zones. We're looking also at the NHSI initiatives specifically on generating data for code validation. And you can see some of the participants there on the side. And these are very good things that are connecting us with a lot of international partners and with the IAEA itself. Within the OECD, I won't go into detail on the expert group on small modular reactors as Veselina will give you some details later. But this is a group that actually, myself and CNL, we chair this group on behalf of CSNI. And it's been an excellent effort to really help align what research efforts need to be done to support safe operations. In addition to this, there's a multitude of NEA joint projects that CNL has gotten involved in from our own interests and also really helps us connect with the international community and understand where we're going. Some of these are focused on current fleets but also many of them are pivoting towards including programs for small modular reactors and new advanced designs. Within the GIF, so Gen4 International Forum, CNL is heavily involved in the risk and safety working group. We're actually co-chairing that. We've got a lot of effort that's been going into risk-informed frameworks, investigation of source terms and the ins and outs of this idea of practical elimination. In addition to that, we're also involved, because of course there's a lot of different SMR and advanced reactor designs in there, looking at very high-temperature gas reactors, molten salt reactors, and the supercritical water reactor, which was an original design very similar to our Kandus. And then I'll touch on the European Union. While Canada is not in the European Union, we are actually quite involved in some of the EU projects that are aligned with our own government objectives. And so we're able to join from that because we have good alignment and interest in the same topical areas. And a couple examples here is the NERES platform, which is looking at radiological emergency response. And so we've been involved with that, making some contributions to the research there and acting as a support organization. Now within the SNETP program, this is a platform for research and development and has a multitude of projects that we're quite involved in. One that I'll highlight is the SASPAM project, which is looking at passive safety in water-cooled SMRs under severe accidents. And this is really very helpful for us because it's allowing us to look into certain things that are coming down the pipe that we might want to know for deployment of the BWRX300. So that's just a flavor of the international efforts we're involved in. But I want to stress here that the reason for this panel and the reason for a lot of us to be here is that international efforts really allow us to leverage common interest and really build on different perspectives throughout the world and get a fuller view of a specific issue or technology, and that's really where they become a bit of a force multiplier and show their worth. So it's quite important for us as a national lab to be involved with this and for Canada as a nation to be involved. We're very happy to be not only players and participants, but also in some cases provide some leadership in these roles and we're quite happy with that. All right, thank you, Andrew. We have time for a couple of questions. I guess I encourage folks to submit their questions if we don't get to them now. We're going to save some time at the end. I think it was on page seven of your slides. You talked about your research program at CNL in SMR particular. You're trying to narrow down the technologies and doing deeper analysis for designs for deployment. How do you make those determinations? How does it work at CNL to make those decisions? So one of the efforts we had to come to, very beginning with advanced reactors in SMR, it had to be a broad technology agnostic thing. I'll just flip back to the slide so everybody can read it while I yammer on here. But basically we have to be prepared for any technology. So we started out in this agnostic approach, making sure we had tools that would work across varying designs. But looking forward with the efforts we have and the work going on, we really had to look at the deployment landscape. So how close are these things to deployment? Will they be coming to Canada? And that's really what we're using to push our analysis into a deeper level. So we have a baseline of experience across a multitude of designs and now the ones that are coming closer to deployment, the BWX-300, the MMR, the Vinci stuff like that, now we're looking to say, okay, this is coming soon. Let's aim some more efforts in depth here to understand the specific safety concerns or how can we generate valuable data for these specific designs. So it's a little bit of a complicated calculus but we're following how the deployments are going in that way. Specifically for those in Canada. Internationally, if there's a technology that's of very big interest elsewhere, we may also include that, but we're quite focused on the Canadian landscape for directing that research. Okay, the next question, given the Canadian focusing on the Canadian landscape, there was a question about does Canada have any plans to develop thorium reactor technologies? At the moment, we are not looking directly at that. We've actually had a lot of efforts within CNL as thorium is one of the options for can-do fuel cycles. So we have at the lab looked at thorium cycles in can-do and understanding thorium as a fuel. At the moment, we're not really having too much effort with deployment. However, there are some commercial corporations in Canada that are looking into thorium as a potential alternative fuel cycle for the current can-do fleet or the future can-do fleet. So we're keeping an eye on those things and if they are starting to move towards deployment or if we have been approached by industry to work with them, we can actually access that long experience with thorium with those fuel cycles that we'd had previously to assist in that. Okay. This is a little bit off the SMR topic but there was a question on any research work that the Canadian Nuclear Lab is doing with fusion. So fusion is another area where we're getting a lot of interest in. In fact, one of our directorates is focused on hydrogen technologies and management of hydrogen isotopes like deuterium and tritium. And from that respect, we have a lot of experience in dealing with deuterium and tritium and the different speciation and how you can change between them, how you can purify certain things from that. And that area has now been tapped and is plugging into the fusion space as a information resource on deuterium and tritium management. So we're slowly feeling into the fusion space in that respect. And I think from the context that are being developed there, there is some interest in the other parts of the lab that are able to do that. However, we're cognizant that fusion is a little bit further off so we can't throw as many resources at it if they are currently focused on something that's going to be, you know, in the next five to ten years. But definitely in the hydrogen space, we are doing a lot of work for that because we do have very good resources and tritium and deuterium experience that we can bring to bear to the fusion industry. Okay, thanks. I think what we'll do, there are several other questions but might be good for panel discussions. I think I'll ask you again here when we're done with this. That sounds great. So let's thank Andrew for his talk. Right, so next up is Eric Thornsbury from Electric Power Research Institute. And please come up and discuss your topic area. I think is, if I remember right, risk analysis methods and tools for advanced reactors. That's it. Thank you. I'll also put a one here just in case. Risk analysis methods and tools for advanced reactors. So I'm going to start at a high level and we'll work our way down from the high level down into those details that will get us risk analysis methods and tools. Together with NEI, EPRI has started to look out at the landscape. Advanced reactors and new reactors are becoming a big deal and what we wanted to do with them was identify what are those enablers that will help the new industry get going and be sustainable for the long run. So what are those issues? We don't like to say there's challenges or problems but there's things that we can learn from the past that we may need to do research on in the present to make sure that the advanced reactors can grow as we hope in the future. So the first phase of this roadmap is focused on North America but working with the Canadians and others. But a lot of the principles generally apply and we hope to expand it to cover other regions as well as EPRI has members from around the world now. There is a QR code there and you can see that it is freely publicly available and beyond the roadmap itself, that's a document that was created as a snapshot in time but there's an implementation board that goes along with it. There's going to be tracking. There's a website that can be accessed that's in development in a beta mode so that this isn't just a static picture but it's an ongoing evolution that we can use to plot out what needs to be done to avoid duplication of effort among different groups and to hold each other accountable as members of industry to try to work toward new reactor deployment. So within the roadmap it breaks down into strategic elements. There's three large groups of strategic elements. Regulatory efficiency is one group. Technology readiness is another and project execution is another. And within those you find the strategic elements and then those further break down into specific actions that industry should take and are identified for tracking purposes. As we work toward the end goal of this presentation which is risk analysis methods and tools you won't see something in one of those boxes that says build a better PRA model which is what I have done for most of my career but what you will see as highlighted in red is that the risk, the PRA model forms a risk analysis the risk informed decision making approaches they feed into a lot of these areas. So you know in NRC language it's kind of a cross cutting issue the development of risk analysis methods and tools. So you know it can go into plant and component design for the vendors who are developing these new designs they can use risk methods and tools to improve their design while it's still on paper. It'll certainly be part of licensing we see the activities going on at the NRC and in Canada and across the world on licensing using risk informed approaches it's going to feed into a lot of these areas nuclear beyond electricity is one of our areas we're used to using power plants to make electricity as Andrew noted and others there's a lot of interest in non-electric applications so then how does that impact how we do the risk analysis which then feeds into all of those other boxes as well. So as we whittle down from the roadmap into the strategic elements we see that some of these areas could really be helped by an evaluation of the risk analysis approaches that we currently use. This breaks down some of those actions that are within there again you're not going to see build a better PRA model but you're going to see things like that first one demonstrate risk informed and performance based approaches there's standards work on this area there's tool development there's people doing peer reviews on their models and developing the tools that are necessary and so that's kind of the most obvious one that you could point to from a risk informed approach perspective but a lot of these others touch it as well I already mentioned the nuclear bound electricity in there even going into siting or operating and maintenance costs we've seen that the currently has successfully used risk informed approaches to not only improve safety but also improve operation through more efficient operating and maintenance approaches so all of these things can work together not just from a safety perspective but if we want the next generation of plants to be successful we have to be sure that we can tackle all of these issues so as we take the next step then we want to narrow it down even further to the risk methods and tools what Epri noticed a few years ago was that we have separate groups at Epri we have an organization like everybody does on one side coming down through our nuclear sector we have a future fleet division and we have an advanced nuclear technology team and they've been looking at new designs for many many years when they started they were focusing on the big giga watt size light water reactors then as new designs became apparent those vendors and a lot of the utilities that were interested joined into Epri we partnered and we started to expand in a lot of those areas on the other side of the org chart within the nuclear sector in the current fleet you go down through the engineering division and you get our risk and safety management team that team has a long history of supporting the industry with tools, methods, software approaches for maintenance and for optimization and for peer review and for all of these things that are essential to a currently operating plant in terms of risk and safety management PRA models, thermal hydraulic models all of that fits into there and what we identified a need for is an overlap between those two we needed somebody who could kind of live in both worlds and focus there and that's one of my roles at Epri is I'm kind of in the green overlap area between A&T and RSM so I have the experience with the current fleet and then we also have the experience with the new designs and so we're bringing those two together into a new sub-program and a new project on risk for advanced reactors the one note there at the bottom is advanced reactors can be a term that gets thrown around can mean different things when we're focused here we're focused on those light water small modular reactors some might call them generation 3 plus so not necessarily the big ones that have been built but the smaller ones that are still in development and are just now starting construction or getting close to that point as well as those generation 4 non-light water reactors the gas reactors the molten salt the sodium the other ones that are non-light water and generally those are also get lumped into the SMR category that we're talking about today so you know we're trying to capture the needs of all of those so this is what we started a year one to two years ago this project on risk analysis and methods and tools so we just want to get a view of the landscape what's out there we know we've got a lot of good risk analysis tools how ready are they to support these new designs and not just the new designs but the new environment that they might be operating in so you might call it a gap analysis or a readiness evaluation but we looked and identified where we're ready what tools are out there and are good ready to go and can be applicable and which ones are not so much or maybe there's even some entire gaps there that should be identified so that was our focus at first and we use that then to develop a roadmap of issues you know what are the highest issues that we're seeing out there and where do we need to go in the next few years to support the development of these advanced reactors that first QR code there on top is our first report that just came out last year that was that initial evaluation we said there's lots of questions out there here are the questions we think are in pretty good shape here are the ones where we think some work needs to be done and some research needs to be done it could be upper it could be others but we've identified those issues we're also connected with other parts of ANT and RSM as I said but there's ongoing DOE work on designs that we interface with and bring a risk flavor to a risk informed flavor to and then the bottom code there is a report that was out last year again freely available to the public on a methodology to demonstrate separation of the nuclear facility from the rest of the facility this is of high interest to especially to those non-electric users but it could apply to electric as well you know as regulation has been implemented over the years and we've figured it out from the sixties into the seventies into the eighties you know you look at a current plant and you've got safety related and safety significant equipment scattered all over the place and so the regulatory envelope is quite big if we can focus on both for the designer and for the regulator really focusing on what's important to safety and keeping that somewhat separated or fully separated from the rest of the facility that gives the flexibility for those non-electric uses and with the proper focus still on safety so coming out of this report we've identified those top issues which I'll spend just a couple minutes on they really fall into two bins one is this is new technology so what kinds of new technology are going to challenge the way we do our risk analysis we need a good basis for putting those things into a PRA model or other forms of risk analysis so we've identified those actions in the center as some of the key topics data is always a question even for current fleet but data for new plants that haven't operated or with new components what do we do when we look at passive systems we're used to pumps and valves and diesel generators in the current fleet well now if you get rid of a lot of those active components what does your PRA look like when the system is much more passively driven what do we do with digital systems current fleets have some of those but a new plant might be even more reliant on digital systems and how do we not just from a design perspective but also from a PRA perspective and then HR a human reliability assessment that's probably going to look different in a plant that looks a lot different with new technology so those are some of the top issues that came up and so we're starting along that path to see what common methods and tools we can help develop the other side of that branch instead of the new technology is different risk informed environment that we might be operating in you look at some of the designs and some of the information that's out there much improved safety even though the current fleet very safe on its own some of the new designs are really pushing the envelope on how safe they can be and so that may challenge some of the ways that we make decisions when we look at CDF and LERF as risk metrics do those make sense for a new reactor that's designed differently are the numbers possibly in a different range of experience than what we're used to what about not just safety I know the safety is the focus of our panel but what about not just safety but other risk metrics that are economically driven or operationally driven where do they fit in you know we've learned by applying risk informed regulation and approaches over the years it improves safety it also improves economics what can we learn from that going forward so those are kind of the two big branches that we're looking at at EPRI you won't be able to read maybe you can on the big screen if you're up front but you won't it's not really meant to be read but we've got some projects started now on the risk metrics and we're following along with what the digital systems work is happening at EPRI again that's not something that's unique to new reactors so we're going to team with projects that are already ongoing in that realm coming up soon we hope to start projects on passive system reliability on external events that are at very low frequencies that might be more dominant or important to a current risk analysis and then we've got some of those other topics laid out for hopefully near future development that is the end there we've got time for a few questions for so let's thank you sorry about that Eric I wanted to get right to the questions that's okay I forget which slide number it was but is it 8 or 9 about you listed several areas of ongoing and future risk analysis the other two have kind of details as well could you provide just some more details pick a couple about the projects on your advanced reactor risk analysis and passive system reliability the two that I mentioned that are we're starting now the one is risk metrics I'll mention that and then I'll touch the passive system on the risk metrics as I mentioned we're looking at options of do you need to define new metrics for every new design on one hand that could be very very appropriate for each design but then when you try to take a step back from a higher level perspective in comparing them or trying to regulate them there may be challenges there can we redefine the metrics that we already have what are some of those questions and what we're actually digging into is we've all been living with the metrics we have for a while and their relationship up to the high level quantitative health objectives what is really the tie there we're kind of digging up some of that background to understand how we currently do it because any changes that we might propose we want to be consistent with how we currently approach things right now trying to understand what's been done what appropriate options are that would focus on health and safety of the public and then provide guidance to developers and PRA modelers for selecting their metrics if they go to the PRA standards it says especially for non-light water you need to define your metrics and a lot of the members are asking us okay how do we do that can you help provide some technical guidance on that then the passive system one is starting up as well there's been a lot of work on that over the years you can find some old EPRI reports even that are 15, 16 years old my name might even be in there and then they went away because they weren't as useful for a while but now they're coming back so we're going to look around the world we actually have I was at the NEA meeting a couple of weeks ago with some of these folks and there's activities going on in Europe in Canada and elsewhere looking at passive system reliability how do you capture those thermal hydraulic uncertainties how do you capture aging not aging but you know what happens to a passive system over time are there changes to the system so that's something we're just kicking off now and so we're interested if you have work on that area or if you're working on a model that has those questions we'd love to learn from each other and try to make it better for everybody there's lots of good questions coming in again some of them are really good for a panel discussion on so I'll try to get some specific maybe you can help with is where do you get the data that you need to for the risk informed approaches you take because it's all about data lots of times yeah data is very important yes and you'll see data it's on our list you know it's I can just say it's challenging it depends on what you're starting with we can learn from other plants we can learn from non-nuclear facilities we can learn from lots of other things but we can also know that data will always have some uncertainties in it and so if you can still assess the safety within those uncertainty bands you can still make decisions even in the midst of uncertainty we already have to do that with data uncertainties and lots of other uncertainties but as long as we can understand the range of what that data could look like we may not have quite as much as we do for the current fleet but it is a challenge so as we look at it maybe we'll focus on the uncertainty aspect maybe we'll focus on specific components it's a little hard as a broad organization we don't want to necessarily do a ton of work on molten salt pumps of a certain variety that it's only going to help one small group we want to do something that's a broader for everybody I'll ask you one more question we got a minute for this do you find that the competitive or the proprietary nature of new reactor designs and inhibits sharing or learning do you have any ideas on how to improve that sharing of important information yes some folks in our organization have tried to use the word co-operation I think they call it co-operation but competition at the same time that is a concern we can certainly try to engage it one of the things that Paris is doing with a lot of the vendors and designers is we've formed technical user groups where they can get together and share as much as they can still in a private setting to try to facilitate that sharing we certainly can't make them do it but they all seem to be very eager to learn from each other they're going to have their company secrets that's part of business but they've seen what the current nuclear fleet has done around the world even by co-operating and if one fails we all feel it so they generally do understand that and so we're doing what we can to facilitate that but we see generally good attitudes toward that one more question for you is EPRI or your organization providing suggestions on action levels based on the metrics the new metrics you're talking about and that impacts on SDP or any OEDs or that sort of thing maybe someday I don't think that's our focus right now first we have to figure out what even those metrics should be and how we measure them and how we put them in there part of that may start to get into where you might set high level goals but I think like SDP action levels or ROP type things I think that's farther down the road I don't know that we would necessarily tackle that because that gets into regulatory issues as well but you know we'd certainly work with NEI and NRC and others to work toward that once we figure out how to even measure them to begin with okay well thank you Eric let's give Eric a hand definitely I have more questions for you later so we are not short of questions here so next Veselina Rangelova and she's with NEA and you're going to talk about Accelerate International Cooperation on SMR Safety Research I know you've been doing a lot in that area so please welcome Veselina Thank you chair and good afternoon everybody it is my pleasure to be with you this afternoon and give you the presentation which is prepared together with my colleague Martina Adorni who is the NEA expert on thermohydraulics and severe accidents Martina is joining us remotely so it's very nice also to have her participating in this meeting I'm also pleased that our director general is here so any difficult questions should be posed to him but in general I would like to give you in the next 15 minutes a brief overview of what is the nuclear energy agency doing to support the deployment and deployment in a safe manner of small and modular reactors not only in its member countries but also globally I'm that's not the beginning of my presentation I guess maybe go to the beginning yeah okay so the content I already told you not so much okay so then let's start NEA is nuclear energy agency that is based in Paris it is an agency of the organization for economic cooperation and development currently we have 34 member countries and these countries are practically all countries developed nuclear power program the main objective of this agency is to support its member countries for safe deployment of nuclear energy within the member countries but also globally and the energy the nuclear energy agency is in general governed by steering committee that is supported by eight standing committees which are one of them giving guidance on the activities to be done in particular subject areas there are two committees that are guiding the NEA activities in the field of nuclear safety this is committee on nuclear regulatory activities CNA and the committee on safety of nuclear installations CSNI we are currently working under the NEA strategic cooperation between the two countries from 1923 till 28 no wonder that a big part of the NEA activities within this period is dedicated to actions and initiatives that NEA is undertaking to support the deployment of nuclear energy and in particular to support global implementation of nuclear energy we have developed a couple of initiatives several conferences but due to the limit of time I'm not going in details of those events you can find information on many of them on the links that are included on my slides or also on the NEA website just the last initiative was launched during the COP in 1998 and it is called Accelerating SMR for NetZero where NEA is proposing quite a comprehensive plan of how to gather member countries efforts in order to accelerate the deployment of small and modular reactors and one publication that I also would like to mention is the NEA SMR dashboard this is a document that has been published for a long time and I would like to to represent in a very concise manner the information on readiness of different SMRs designs the readiness is assessed towards elements like licensing, citing, financing, supply chain engagement with the public and fuel this document is revised regularly as the designs of the SMR this issue just a couple of days ago and by the way a hard copy of that edition are available on a stand nearby the desk for registration at this conference you are very much welcome to pick up a copy of this document as well as of several other publication of the NEA and now I would like to concentrate my speech on small and modular reactors in 2021 CSNI establish its expert group on small and modular reactors and as Andrew mentioned he is the chair of this group and thanks to him and the experts from another 20 countries this group has already its first report that was published in October last year the main task of the group was to make critical analysis of all the activities and all the products that have been produced by CSNI in the field of safety defined which of these products are straightfully applicable to small and modular reactors defined where some of those products need to be amended in order to be applicable to small and modular reactors defined those areas where CSNI needs to work in future or where CSNI has to put priorities in order to support safe demonstration of small and modular reactors. The group came up with the conclusion which is also very natural that we should work in two tracks one dealing with the light water type of SMR designs which are close to deployment and the other track design which is similar to the one covered by generation 4 because those technologies are deployed with different pace than light water reactors. The group has defined several recommendations and grouped them in a couple of areas and suggested that the CSNI is implementing those activities with which we will review the implementation of this activity, keep the track of what's going on and further initiate and further boost the implementation of these activities. Just on this slide I try very briefly to summarize the information on the four major area on which activities have started already. The first one was decided that we will be working on identifying identification and raking tables to identify SMR safety phenomena and priorities for future efforts. We know that there are already a lot of parts available however systematic analysis of parts for similar technologies have not been done and we still don't have at international level quite many of the main factors are. The second area is initiating of detail safety assessment and safety analysis work which may be needed to create common or consensus opinion on important critical safety issues which are commonly discussed when it comes to the safety demonstration of small and common to all type of nuclear reactors or majority of them. There were eight particular issues that the group has suggested to be considered by CSNI and they rank from implementation of defence in depth with passive system that can be used at multiple level of defence in depth going through the innovative fuel classification and qualification and uncertainties of PSA analysis where we don't have operational data and last but not least what kind of procedures and methodologies we need to apply when we would like to make emergency preparedness zoning for small and modular reactors. In all this area CSNI is working and is aiming at developing consensus or technical opinion papers that can be used to make sure that we are able to support our member countries. The third one would be the work to be done for validation of computer codes and last but not least is actions that will be taken to generate data through joint safety research project to support SMR safety. Now I would like to give you just a couple of examples with one example. One is the code validation matrix and another is reliability of passive system. Code validation matrix is a notion that is well known to all safety assessment experts that are using computer codes for safety demonstration of nuclear power reactors. This is well structured set of data with test facilities which exist and that could simulate this phenomena and the experimental data that have been received through experiments performed on the respective test facilities. All this data as I said is defined in a very well structured manner in a form of matrix and currently NEA possesses the set of data that can be used for code validation in the world. These data from the experiments performed to support code validation are well preserved in the NEA data bank. The establishment of CCVM as we call it, this is CSNI code validation matrix was done for the first time in 1987. The first set of reactors that have been considered were light water reactors of western type of design and then the CCVM has been expanded to cover also VVR technologies and phenomena associated with severe accidents such as in vessel core degradation and also phenomena associated with behaviors of the systems in the containment. The code validation matrix has been updated regularly and currently we have more than 1000 experiments that have their data stored in the NEA data bank and this covers more than 116 phenomena. Within the framework of the activities to support safety of SMR enhancement NEA started the process to revise code validation matrix to identify what of the data collected in this matrix could be used for SMR validation for SMR code validation and then also to identify what additional experiments and maybe what additional facilities may be needed to produce data that will be needed to validate the code for particular phenomena that did not exist in the current reactors. The other subject that I very briefly would like to mention here is the reliability of passive system. As it was mentioned, there are a lot of projects that have been performed to assess the reliability of passive system. There were a lot of benchmark performed to compare different approaches used by different countries to assess the reliability of passive system . We don't have a consensus at international level of what methodology could be used. And NEA is going to analyze what is available in our old products and come up with such kind of guidelines maybe by the end of the year. The next product that we are going to produce soon is high level nuclear safety that we would like to develop in order to define what are the priorities, what are steps to be taken in order in the coming year to have good international research that can help member states to support the safe demonstration of small and modular reactor and mostly to define the priorities for research which needs to be implemented. I'm very also happy that we are taking the lead of the core group that is going to develop these road maps. Also any questions on that subject to Ray? The road map is suggesting that the future research at international level will be defined on subject area. We will be combining the operating cases, the regulators, the technical support organization, researchers and scientists that will be working on topics in order to define the most cost effective way for performance of research. So we will be working on fuel safety, we will be working on thermohydraulic and severe accidents, structural mechanics and last but not least on waste management. And on next slide I just try to give you an idea about the research facilities that exist at international level, international research and that we hope that in the future it will be possible to have many joint projects that will generate data which is needed to prove all the claims about the safety of all these innovative technologies that the designers are bringing and then the regulators have to review and to agree with. So at the end of my presentation I just want to be as positive as the chair of the NRC this morning and just say let's accelerate international cooperation on SMR safety research and in this way we could support also safety harmonization globally and NEA is doing this by three major ways. Developing common position safety issue, developing consensus methodologies that can be used and having joint safety project and by doing it together we may have most effective utilization of human and financial resources and this is the end and I think I was exactly 15 minutes. Thank you. There's time for a couple questions for Jan. You had a couple slides on the CSNI co-validation matrix and what support are you looking for for improving this data set and how do you expect it to be utilized in the future? Code validation matrix, updating of code validation matrix is activity that has been initiated already by W Gamma. W Gamma is the working group of NEA on thermohydraulics and severe accidents. This action is comprehensive and quite complex because first it requires to assess the quality of the data that is currently available in the CCVM then assess which of these data could be used for validation of computer codes for the SMRs and to define the new data which will be needed and to generate such data. It is obviously an action that will require a lot of financial support because research unfortunately needs money and we all know that particular experiments that might be needed to support the validation of computer codes could be costly and that's why NEA believes that the mechanism that we have for joint project is very successful and it gives benefits to the countries that you pay just a part of this experiment to get the results from the whole project and as many of others have noticed already this mechanism was very successful. On the other side we believe that we need to look for some new mechanisms for financing. We hope that in the roadmap for the SMRs we will try to suggest some new mechanisms to the governments, to the member countries. It is clear that in addition to the funds that we have in the organization, we should also try to find a way to approach the industry to get in some maybe public-private initiatives and on this subject to look for funds and also understanding that from safety research that will be also benefit for the designers as well as for the regulators. So if any of the audience has any idea about how we can get more funding from SMRs, I think you are also welcome and I can stay later and get your proposals or you can even send us emails. We are open for this and of course we count on the director general for finding more money as well. One more question and then we'll have some for the panel as well. Has NEA coordinated with every given both seem to be tackling passive projects? Anya is coordinating with all possible international organizations. I mentioned I forgot to mention here that for example the expert group on SMR work in very close cooperation with the IEA because the main idea was not to duplicate activities and certainly we can say that what we have proposed is well coordinated with the IEA. We have been approaching the expert group on SMR and they have presented their activities but in particular on the certainties of PSAs we have been also in contact with them and for the passive system reliability they are involved in some of our activities as well through WGAMA and we will if Eric does not confirm this then we will have to improve. I was just going to ask Eric to confirm that. Yes, as I said a lot of groups have done a lot of work in this area and what we are kind of doing from our members perspective is really trying to cut through and find what is that key message what are the methods out there that work and what might need some adjustment so what Vaseline is doing and what other groups are doing we are all trying to cooperate and compete at the same time and not duplicate work but we all want to learn what is out there and then maybe customize for our specific audience. And the important issue also in this international cooperation is when we are developing some position papers in a given subject it is also important that we have cooperation in order to make sure that whatever is produced it is used for something and that is where we need to be and because methodologies and position papers this is one of the strengths of the NEA we develop documents that are consensus they are developed with the agreement of all the countries that participate in NEA and as I mentioned there are 34 countries operating nuclear power plants and of course EPRI has its own members which are the operators or the designer organizations but it is important that documents even if they are not the same they are consistent and they don't give controversial opinion on this subject and of course their documents maybe in many cases are much more pragmatic because they tell you exactly how to do while the NEA documents are a bit more at a higher level they tell you why it should be done and how it should be done in order to be considered acceptable. Okay. Thank you again Vaseline. Thank you very much. Our last speaker or panelist is Steve Bajorek and Steve we go back a long time when I first met you and I was looking for working for DOE and I think I know you are kind of our thermohydrolics expert or senior level advisor at the NRC and he's going to talk about NRC readiness for advanced reactor the independent analysis that we do for that so turn it over to you Steve. Thanks. Great. And good afternoon everybody. It's really neat the end of the day to see such a large audience. I think it's a nice testament to the interest in small modular reactors, new technologies and where the industry is going. It's really nice to see a group like this for something like this as opposed to decommissioning which we saw as a number of years ago. Okay. But as Ray mentioned what I'm going to be doing is to do independent analysis of all of these new designs. We see this as an integral step that has to be done for two reasons. One we have to ensure safety of these plants which are licensed. It helps our regulating side of the agency ask good questions, understand the design and maybe the most important part it helps educate us. It helps us understand what these new technologies are like and how they should behave. So, and you know, just as I kind of said these are exciting times for the nuclear industry, the nuclear field. There's a huge diversity in designs which are under development. A large variety of different types of designs, fuel types which are being proposed as you go around and you look at things like triso fuel, metallic fuels which are being proposed and the whole gamut of micro-reactors to the more or less mature technologies of gas-cooled and sodium-fast reactors. You know, those are being proposed the molten chloride and molten fluoride fuel salt reactors which have a lot of interesting aspects to them for their operation and how we can refuel those. We have to go back probably 50, 60, maybe even 70 years to see this diversity and the technology that's out there. And the key mission for the NRC is we need to be prepared for any and all of these and we need to do this on a short-term basis. We can't take 10, 20 years. We've got to get ready right now and if you go back 50 or 60 years, there wasn't an NRC so we also have to realize that this is going to be the NRC is going to be analyzing these types of designs. The SMR landscape presents some challenges. It's always changing. In light-water reactor space, we look at the large conventional reactors. They'll call the conventional Westinghouse four-loop 3411 plants. It's kind of given way now to much more interest in passively cooled plants. AP1000, small reactors, the new scale, the whole-tech, the BWRXT. They're safe. They rely on passive cooling mechanisms but from a modeling and simulation point of view, that's actually more difficult. You have small driving heads which kind of control what's going on into a vent. As Veselina pointed out, reliability of these systems are something that we have to investigate. And these are things where the global cooperation is really helping out. I'll point to on my next slide. Fuels is another area that we're moving away from the conventional oxides to things like HALU, accident-tolerant fuel, high-burn-up type fuels. Not so much a new design type technique but we're seeing the industry move into that. When we talk about SMRs at the NRC, often we kind of, in the back of our mind, we're thinking about water-cooled plants but we realize globally and in the U.S., small modulars is moving very rapidly into non-lightwater reactors. These present their own challenges from understanding what the hydraulics are in a pebble-bed reactor to the behavior of the Triso fuels. Dealing with fast spectrums, which the NRC has not had a long history in being able to do with, dealing with metallic fuels, mechanical expansion, molten salt reactors where there's a high uncertainty just in the thermo-physical properties that have to be dealt with and understood in addition to the idea that the fuel is moving and there's a very tight coupling between the neutronics, the neutron precursors moving through the system. Micro-reactors, a lot of different variety out there. We started off looking at those designs which are cooled by heat pipes. Again, some components here which our experience base did not really include a long time ago, but we're getting up to speed very rapidly on those. First, let's talk a little bit about SMRs with passive cooling. And this is a place where the global collaboration has really helped out in the past and continues to help us out right now. The NRC is in pretty good shape here when it comes to dealing with plants with the passive cooling. We've got a great experience base of dealing with the AP600, the AP1000, ESBWR, testing that went on both by the applicants and by the NRC back in the 90s in the early 2000s really helped benchmark our codes and got us prepared to do a very good analysis of these types of designs. But now as we're moving to smaller modular reactors, the new scales, the whole tech, the BWRXT, well, we don't have quite the experimental database that we had back in the 90s in 2000s. We don't have the number of facilities that we used to. So we have to look globally to tests which are being formed in the Korean Atlas facility, PKL, Etheranias that Veselina just talked about, Panda, Perseo and other types of systems in order to get the systems, they got the database together by which we can benchmark our codes for these newer types of systems. Global cooperation has been essential here because I don't think any one single country can build the experimental database infrastructure that's going to be needed to give us all of this information. So these are areas that we've greatly benefited from. And we also get a lot of help from our camp program code application maintenance, CSARP for severe accidents. Other regulators are using our codes helping to benchmark those and this speeds the whole process. So this global collaboration has really, really helped us with the light water cooled SMRs. And we're looking towards the same type of collaborative experience as we move into the advanced reactors, the non-LWRs. A few years ago, we put together a series of plans on how we would deal with these and they would go all the way from systems analysis, fuel performance, all the way to dose and consequences. And we laid out the plans to address some of the things that looked like technology gaps. What were those things that we had to really educate and learn about over the next few years in order to license these designs? I can't go through all of these, but we see different phenomena that we have to be mindful of and understand and validate our codes for, which are quite different than what we dealt with for light water reactors. Thermal stratification, thermal striping, that's a good example and this is another place where global collaboration has helped out quite a bit. W Gamma has sponsored an annual series of CFD exercises, CFD for nuclear reactor safety where they're looking at stratifications, running tests, doing benchmarks. This is helping sharpen those tools to deal with these phenomena that we, by and large, didn't have to deal with a whole lot and the conventional light water reactors. We're looking at other international benchmarks where we're looking at thermomechanical expansion and that's effect on reactivity for the fast reactors. How you model things like neutron precursors in movement of the fuel in a fuel salt reactor. Two other means of removing decay heat from these systems. Now we recognized early on when we saw a lot of these processes and phenomena, they were modeling gaps in the conventional NRC tools and we were going to have to start looking elsewhere in order to develop the means to analyze independently these new types of designs. So we started to think out of the box and we said no rather than trying to develop further develop our conventional NRC codes let's look towards advanced reactor tools which are being developed by the Department of Energy and we looked at what they call the moose framework and we decided what we need to do is to merge our codes into this framework and give us a capability to analyze all of these designs with a limited number of staff. You can always pick up a number of codes and try to learn all of those but we don't have the staff to educate to that broad number so we said let's gravitate towards this. First is the cost savings. Secondly because all of these new reactors, the non-LWRs are very tightly coupled systems. You can't solve just the thermal hydraulics or just the neutronics. You have to look at everything together. I'm not going to go through all of the codes on here. I'd love to talk for hours on this afterwards but we have the capability in this platform to look at neutronics to look at systems analysis to look at water cooled systems or reactor cavity cooling that have boiling two phase flow all the way down to CFD and merge into one system so we can pick and choose the detail that we need for the problem. We want to keep things simple but not simplified. The reason for this again, this gives us a system that is now able to deal with these tightly coupled multi-physics scenarios that we deal with. A sodium fast reactor for example, the thermal environment heats up the core plate that expands and gives you your negative reactivity that shuts down the core. So you have to look at all of those simultaneously in order to do a credible analysis. That was another important reason to go to this new framework. For severe accident, source term consequence analysis, we looked at our codes and realized we could stay with the Melcore scale, Max code for looking at dispersion. We could take those codes and further develop those in order to look at the new phenomena that we are going to see in the non-LWRs. We started off and we thought that rather than just racing into code development and validation which is an important topic and we are certainly not done with that yet. Let's start to develop a set of reference plants. By that I mean let's get a candidate design that's out there that looks like acts like, smells like the real prototype that we think the applicant is going to come in. We don't have benefit of that proprietary information yet. We've got some of that information but let's look ahead and see where we are going. Let's develop a set of reference designs for each of the major technologies. We use the Chinese HDRPM for the gas cooled pebble bed design. Applicants can come in and looks very similar to this a little bit different power but this allows us now to develop that system of code so we can deal with the 2D porous media. We can track pebbles and we can do depletion now in a pebble bed reactor capability that we didn't have five years ago. We can model in fair amount of detail now a sodium fast reactor. We've picked the ABTR. It's a paper reactor. We think it's going to look very similar to one of the applicants but now we can start to look at that system, the core plate expansion. It's going to look very similar to what we did today. Don't wait years from now when you get the application in and then realize you have to hold things up in order to develop your codes to do your analysis at that point. Find the problems now. The molten salt reactors we've been looking at the PBFHR again for public pebble tracking, MSRE and two different flavors of microreactors in order to benchmark our capabilities there. And then we have some other plants available that we're looking at but those aren't really leading the licensing approach. We're taking a three prong approach here. We start simple. We add in some complexities as we realize we need them. So we're up into phase two. We think we have the capability to get the proper designs. We want to get to stage three so as we get the proprietary information, the actual design, we can take those reference plants, change the input and get to our analysis quickly, not hold anything up. Next step is to improve on the development of the codes. Look at some other things we haven't looked at before, solidification and a molten salt, thermal physical properties, getting raised, raised, raised, can tell me to sound be quiet. In summary, we have been developing the codes and we're preparing for our independent analysis for SMRs. We think we're in pretty good shape. International collaboration is key. Participation in international benchmarks on the broad range of plant technologies out there benefits everybody and we want to continue that. Identification, quantification of uncertainties, yeah, we're looking at that. But by and large, short of getting proprietary information, the actual design, we feel that we're well prepared to do independent analysis and we're ready to move into that era. So anyway, thank you very much. I did want to make one comment and then we'll have one question for you and then go to some group questions. You know, how the international collaborations are important and I know my time in research as well, I really want to emphasize that. We can't go it alone. We just don't have the time or the money to all do it individually. So I think domestically, our partners domestically as well as internationally, I know are essential for the NRC to succeed in helping enable deployment of advanced and small modular reactors. Okay, you said you could talk for hours about the blue crab framework. You've got one minute. All right. And when it comes to applying these codes, this is on your blue crab slide, I think. When it, since some of these are applying some of these relatively new codes to reactor designs that are available in development, what from your, in your professional opinion, what recommendations would you have that could help help developers with this? Yeah, it's a good question. Well, I look at, especially with the non-LWRs, we have new technologies, you know, technologies that we're not well-versed in. We have a lot of new applicants. Okay, we aren't necessarily dealing with the same group of developers. We have a lot of new reviewers. Okay, there's an educational component. When you do these analyses, my recommendation is to look at best estimate plus uncertainties. Look at uncertainties that are associated with that scenario. There are techniques now. As you look at that, you can find out what were those things that dominated your uncertainty and dominated the transient. That does two things. Okay, it also helps us identify the margin in that design to whatever figure of merit we're looking at, but it also helps us focus our review on the things which are most important. You can't look at everything, but look at those things which dominate your scenario. And I think that's a way of understanding how the plants behave and focusing on a review to limit the amount of time that we spend on that. Okay, thank you. I won't be able to answer them all, but I wanted to pick out some that I think applied to all the speakers. And so I'll start with one that I'll start with Andrew, since it's been a while since you've talked, so you're probably ready for another question here. Every presenter maybe in a different way talked about gaps and associated with research and SMRs and deployment SMRs and what do you see and I'm sure it's all very much dependent on the reactor type and the stage you're in. What major gaps in the reactor types you're looking at, each of you that you see in the knowledge and the gaps? I'll just deal with this for a second. So I mean we have nine minutes and 45 seconds. Okay, I could be here for three more hours. Well, so one of the things I think to recognize, we at the lab of course are looking at a wide variety of different systems, and you're going to identify a whole set of gaps for this specific reactor type and this one here. Really what we have to look at it from a point of view of sort of the common type of analysis you would do to find those gaps to really see what phenomena we're needing to look into. And that tends to be through you know, PERT analysis to really using those standardized techniques to pull out the gaps and then try and fill them. I mean a lot of the questions for passive safety are related to, as Steve alluded, the low driving forces because it's natural circulation and it's for the advanced technologies for gas reactors, you know, we have to ask what potential is there for graphite oxidation. What is, you know, so there's so many specific niche areas, but they're all they're brought forward by that standardized process of looking through and understanding the different facets of the technology. So I think the important part is really to go back to our good procedures for determining those gaps and you know, we can talk about all the different gaps for individual technology, but you're still pulling them out from the same way and then you're saying, okay, how do we construct experiments to produce data to help fill these potential gaps of data or how do we really develop the understanding of the phenomena we need. How does that compare with what the EPRI is doing on their on your exercise, like road map exercises? Oh, I think it fits very nicely. I mean, we're kind of taking a very similar approach, you know, the things we talked about in the presentation are very technical topics. So we identify specific technical gaps, but if you look at them from a broader perspective, it's really building that assurance of the safety. We're focused safety here. Building that assurance we're already have some level of confidence, but we need to build that assurance and we need to be able to communicate it. And so I can go run a PRA model and give you numbers with uncertainty and we need to be able to identify what's important and how do we track bands on the numbers, but what are the insights and how do we gain those insights? How do we focus on what's important? Like Steve said, you know, it's identifying those. How to find what's important, how to find and communicate those risk insights is really going to drive our assurance of the safety. I know of this. You talking about use of PURT we need to go a bit more general where I think are the gaps or something like priorities that we also need to concentrate is no wonder I would repeat again this to me is also the validation of computer codes, because safety demonstration of these reactors will be predominantly based on simulations. We are knowing that now you have artificial intelligence, you will have new computer codes or many calculations and to what extent we are able to be confident that all these calculations are actually predicting correctly reliability, the behavior during the accident is something that I believe is important but okay, that's because we were working a lot on this field. The other area where we recently were discussing a lot and it's not necessarily the biggest gap but just to bring you to your attention was that how do we define the containment for all these systems? Because now for small and modular reactors you more and more you see concepts where they are talking about functional containment and what do we understand by this what kind of phenomena we have to model in this functional containment, how does it that will be something different from what we used to have for the previous reactors same is with the defense in depth how we implement defense in depth when you have for example passive system being claimed at all the levels of defense in depth that this will need further thinking and somehow of common understanding that we all can have similar acceptance of this because there is no other way we can give the systematic or consistent message to the designers if we don't have consensus at our level. Do you want to comment on that? I'm kind of optimistic especially with the non-LWRs the gaps are actually fewer than what we think they are these are all single phase systems and that gets you away from the two phase complications that we see in light water reactors that's very good I think that from an analysis point of view and the tools we and the industry are pretty close to being able to do a very credible even based on the limited database and information we have it's not zero but we don't have that body of information with light water reactors and we're at the point to make progress we need to see prototypes and we need to start moving towards the actual design in these more mature technologies like the gas cooled and the sodium fast molten salt I think we need more of a database there but I think we're ready to start being more aggressive on moving ahead on building prototypes are going to answer more questions not just with modeling and simulation but those other things that come and complicate your life, corrosion operability and things like that The next question is a good question on modeling and simulation for all the speakers and I'll start with Steve we'll work our way this way then the question was or the comment there was discussion on modeling and simulation tools by all of you what are the steps that we should be taking as international community to encourage international collaboration on the development and validation of these codes I'd like to see the benchmarks start to focus on what it could be an operating plant or an integral facility you know I think a benchmark on something like the HTRPM would be useful because then you get the comparison of all the different analytical methods to some experimental data it may not answer all of your questions but doing that and starting to look at all of the different technologies I think we've done some work in gas cooled reactors there's work by the gen4 there are benchmarks for sodium fast reactors let's start doing molten salt let's try to pick a microreactor and getting that entire gamut of technologies out there okay thanks Steve it's very difficult to add something to his answer to how to that's what is needed how to attract the community to international cooperation is by just disseminating more how beneficial this is for everybody and how cost effective it is and I believe that by now maybe the research community knows very well about the mechanisms through which we are cooperating internationally but maybe we also have to reach out of communities which are not necessarily just research communities we have to go more to the further TSOs to the regulators and then make clear to them what are the benefits of this international cooperation and I believe sessions like this at least to me it is very useful for such kind of activities yeah and I would say yes we do need to cooperate internationally the thermal hydraulics modeling piece is a part of it but there's other kinds of modeling as well the digital systems not just how they function how we deal with those and the human machine interface there's international work that we're doing and others are doing and we're trying to jump in on those kinds of modeling too it's going to be different so we need to look at the whole range of different modeling tools thanks Andrew yeah I'll just add really at the lab we really look forward to international benchmarks international collaboration because it allows us to take the research dollars we have and leverage them with the experience and perspectives the different perspectives of what we're doing from all the international players in these kinds of benchmarks and they really allow us to do a good robust assessment of what we're doing and compare data across countries across different codes and different perspectives and you get a much greater understanding of the phenomena so that's why I think international benchmarking is one of the best ways to really push our understanding and really help to qualify our codes and our performance no matter what we're doing because you get that breadth of perspective and you also get so many different approaches okay thanks that's all the time we have for questions I'll take the last easy question one that I'm able to answer is there's questions about the availability of the presentations and they are all available to anybody who wants to take a look at them or print them off the RIC website so with that I'd like to thank all the presenters there's a great discussion good participation from the audience I'm sorry we couldn't get to there's still a lot of great questions left out there so maybe if there's anything you'd like to ask the presenters we'll kind of stick around for maybe another 15 minutes or so you can come up and ask questions of the presenters so with that I'd like to close the session and thank you very much thank you very much great job good job thank all of us thanks a lot Eric