EU Clearinghouse for NPP OEF

Abstract

In the European Union, a regional initiative has been set up in 2008 in support of EU Member State nuclear safety authorities, but also EU technical support organizations, international organizations and the broader nuclear community, to enhance nuclear safety through improvement of the use of lessons learned from operational experience of nuclear power plants (NPPs) [1,2]. The initiative, called “the EU Clearinghouse”, is organized as a network operated by a centralized office located at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. It gathers European Safety Authorities from EU countries that have NPPs and Switzerland. It is open to European technical support organizations and international organizations. The reduction of occurrence and significance of events in NPPs and their safe operation is its ultimate goal. The objectives of the EU Clearinghouse are to allow effective and efficient implementation of operational experience (OE) feedback for improvement of safety of NPPs through: • Strengthening co-operation between EU Safety Authorities, Technical Support Organizations and the international OE community to collect, evaluate and share NPP operational events data and apply lessons learnt in a consistent manner throughout member countries. • Establishment of European best-practice for assessment of operational events in NPPs • Coordination of the NPP OEF activities and maintenance of effective communication between experts who are involved in OEF analyses from European regulatory authorities and their technical support organizations (TSO) • Support for the long-term EU research and policy needs on NPP Operational Experience Feedback. EU Clearinghouse provides services such as technical and scientific work to disseminate the lessons learned from past operating experience, background research in OEF, topical operational experience reports, reviews of draft IRS reports etc. for its members and also public information on recent operational experiences (accessible via https://clearinghouse-oef.jrc.ec.europa.eu/).