Nuke safety body lauds India's nuclear power plant safety standards

New Delhi, Apr 30 : The chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), S K Sharma, said on Wednesday that India's first national report on the safety of its nuclear power plants was lauded at the fourth Review Meeting of the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) in Vienna.

Sharma said India's strong comprehensive capability for the entire nuclear fuel cycle and the well-equipped technical support from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and th eIndira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research was also appreciated.

"Our human resource quality was very well acknowledged as operators in Indian power plants are graduate engineers with extensive training, which is not the case in most countries," said Sharma.

He further added that the size of the audience in attendance during India's presentation was very high.

Sharma said India presented its 206-page report, which included details of its effective regulatory mechanism for 17 operating nuclear plants and six plants under construction.

The convention highly appreciated India's work on probabilistic safety assessment, which demonstrates that the probability of any untoward incident is extremely small (less than 0.000001 per year).

It also lauded the fact that the Nuclear Power Corporation and the Indian regulatory body have mechanisms in place that use operating experience feedback both Indian and global to improve safety effectively.

Sharma led a 17 member delegation that included top officials of BARC and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.

ANI