During the week of August 27, 2018, Dr. Charles Miller and Mr. Mark Tonacci of AdSTM; Ms. Shannon King of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); and Mr. Peter Hughes, representing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), provided consultation to the Polish nuclear regulator, the Panstowowa Agencja Atomiskyki (PAA) in Warsaw. This consultation was focused on the PAA’s development of regulatory infrastructure to conduct a future construction permit (CP) review, which is a key activity under the PAA’s Advanced Licensing Exercise Project (ALEP). The agenda included topics on the PAA organization, Polish nuclear law and regulations, comparisons to NRC and IAEA regulatory guidance, internal and external technical competency needs, and early drafts of schedules for a CP review. The consultation was conducted as a collaborative effort between the International Regulatory Development Partnership (IRDP) and the IAEA Technical Cooperation programs. The week’s work followed through on plans developed in an IRDP/IAEA workshop conducted in 2017.
During the week, the PAA made presentations and the instructors provided constructive feedback and responded to many specific inquiries. Instructors noted that the PAA had made significant progress in defining organizational needs and had begun to develop the necessary regulatory guidance with insights from NRC and IAEA documents. The instructors also provided several presentations. The NRC presentations were based on recent power plant application review experience regarding prerequisites necessary prior to the start of an application review, as well as insights on schedule development. In addition, multiple presentations were made based on the extensive IAEA documentation available to support the PAA in their developmental work of creating licensing documents. Participants were highly engaged in sharing current regulatory and organizational capabilities during the consultation. The week ended in discussion of potential plans for a simulated partial CP regulatory review using an established reference design as a model.