David Squarer participated in an IAEA Technical Meeting on Siting and Technology Solutions, held at IAEA headquarter in Vienna on October 1-5, 2012. The meeting was attended by participants from 22 countries in addition to numerous staff members from the IAEA. Participating countries included: Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, Egypt, France, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Poland, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Vietnam, and the USA. The main objective of the meeting was to highlight - in particular to newcomer countries – the siting selection and evaluation process, and to highlight the IAEA siting-related requirements, guides, and services. David made a presentation at the meeting on the “NRC IRDP experience in site licensing training for new nuclear power programs”. He has participated actively in discussing technical siting issues, as well as regulatory approaches, and public education and public communication issues which many new comer countries are finding to be essential if they want to construct new nuclear power plants.
As a follow on to David’s active participation, highlighting the IRDP activities, the IAEA has explored the possibility of coordinating the IRDP and IAEA siting-related training activities to newcomer countries. In addition, several participant countries expressed interest in future interaction with IRDP, including Poland (Environmental Impact Statement Workshop), Egypt (Siting Application Review, and QA Workshop), Malaysia (Siting Application Review), and Algeria has inquired as to how they could join the IRDP.