Benoit Zerger

Benoit Zerger works in the Nuclear Reactor Safety Assessment Unit of the Institute for Energy and Transport, JRC, European Commission. He is the coordinator of the European Clearinghouse for Operating Experience Feedback for Nuclear Power Plants. He has a M.Sc. in engineering.

Learning from the past and from each other's' experience is a common process used within industries where a very high reliability is requested. Today nearly 440 nuclear reactors produce electricity around the world. In the European Union, nuclear power accounts for almost 30% of total electricity production. Operating Experience (OE) from these reactors is a valuable source of information which allows operators to continually improve both their knowledge and the safety of nuclear installations. This collective knowledge currently represents approximately 15,000 cumulated reactor-years of practical experience worldwide.

In the European Union, the need for enhanced coordination and cooperation on operational experience feedback between the national nuclear safety authorities was recognised and this led to the establishment, in 2008, of a regional initiative set up in support of EU Member State nuclear Safety Authorities, EU Technical Support Organisations, international organisations and the broader nuclear community, to enhance nuclear safety through the improved use of lessons learned from operational experience.

This initiative, called the European Clearinghouse for Operational Experience Feedback for Nuclear Power Plants (NPP), is organized as a regional network gathering Safety Authorities from the EU region and operated by a centralised office located at the Institute for Energy and Transport of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission at Petten, the Netherlands. Currently seventeen European Safety Authorities and three European Technical Support Organisations (France, Germany, Belgium) are participating in the European Clearinghouse.

The setting up of this initiative at European Community level allows the leveraging of resources, both in terms of experts and data, as well as better identification of Community needs for technical work and its enhanced coordination.

In cooperation with the Safety Authorities participating in the European Clearinghouse, areas where a community approach could lead to significant added value were identified and prioritised, from which the following the European Clearinghouse work programme was established:

• Statistical / trend analysis of OE databases. In order to identify the major families of safety-significant and recurring events, statistical / trend analyses of several OE databases have been or are being performed, with the final aim of identifying the areas on which the efforts should be focussed.
• Preparation of Topical Studies providing in-depth assessment of preselected subjects related to NPP operational experience. The IAEA/OECD/NEA Incident Reporting System (IRS) is chosen as a reference database to identify events corresponding to the technical fields scrutinised. After approval by the EU Clearinghouse Members, the resulting reports are made available on the IRS website by the IAEA.

In addition to the IRS database, for some of the topical studies, databases of EU TSOs have been used in order to improve the overall sample size of event reports and the subsequent expertise on the topic, with the support of the TSOs concerned.

• Contribution to improve the quality of event reports submitted from the participating countries to the Incident Reporting System: the EU Clearinghouse provides support to all its members for the drafting of high quality IRS reports.
• Quarterly OE report. In 2009, a quarterly report on OEF has been initiated in order to disseminate timely information on worldwide recent significant events in NPPs. The report is based on a screening of the available public information. The quarterly report is published on the web site of the EU Clearinghouse.
• Database. A European Clearinghouse centralised Data Base has been developed in order to ensure long term storage of OE related information. The database allows storage of event reports, feedback reports and additional related documentation. It incorporates advanced investigative and analytical assessment capabilities facilitating the data analysis, trend identification tools and uses a user-friendly interface.
• A web site has been developed in order to enhance the communication and the sharing of information between the Clearinghouse members. It comprises a public part gathering general information about the project and documents open to external publication, and a working area restricted to the Clearinghouse members. https://clearinghouse-oef.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

Further to these activities, the EU Clearinghouse is participating in several international cooperation projects on OE, mainly through the OECD-NEA working groups and the IAEA, in order to exchange information on operational experience and coordinate the work programme of the EU Clearinghouse with existing international activities.