Uranium supply adequate to meet demand
New publications
Nuclear safety
Nuclear science
Data Bank

Uranium supply adequate to meet demand

New publications

Publications on sale can be ordered at the OECD bookshop: www.oecd.org/scripts/publications/bookshop/redirect.asp.

Forty Years of Uranium Resources, Production and Demand in Perspective
The Red Book Retrospective
ISBN 92-64-02806-4. Price: €90, $121, £64, ¥12 500, 278 pages.

Free publications are available at www.nea.fr/html/pub/webpubs/. Paper copies may be requested by sending an e-mail to neapub@nea.fr.

Releasing the Sites of Nuclear Installations
A Status Report
ISBN 92-64-02307-0. 34 pages (280 kb).

Disponible également en français :
Liberation des sites des installations nucléaires
Rapport de synthèse
ISBN 92-64-02308-9. 34 pages (277 ko).

Source Convergence in Criticality Safety Analyses
Phase I: Results for Four Test Problems
ISBN 92-64-02304-6. 204 pages (2.0 mb).

Nuclear safety

Participants in the stress corrosion cracking and cable ageing project (SCAP) held their first technical meeting on cable insulation ageing on 18-19 September 2006 in Paris, France. This part of the project, a Japanese initiative, aims to: establish a database covering major ageing phenomena for the degradation of cable insulation; create a knowledgebase of evaluated data; and assess the available data with a view to identifying the basis for best practices which will help regulators and operators to further improve ageing management.  

The NEA workshop on Benchmarking of Computational Fluid Dynamics Codes for Application to Nuclear Reactor Safety, held on 5-7 September 2006 in Garching, Germany, was an occasion to monitor the current status of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code validations for nuclear reactor safety issues and to promote the availability and distribution of experimental data suitable for benchmarking. The workshop outcomes will be described in a forthcoming technical report on the evaluation of existing CFD assessment criteria and applied to the establishment of a web-based assessment matrix for CFD codes. More information is available at www.nea.fr/html/nsd/workshops/CFD4NRS/index.html.

The NEA Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities has just issued a report on appropriate corrective actions for pressurised water reactors following a loss of residual heat removal while in mid-loop condition. A survey of member countries found that the corrective actions currently applied range from voluntary (by the operator) to mandatory (as imposed by the regulatory authority). The report's authors conclude that voluntary initiatives are not very effective, while mandatory solutions imposed by the regulator (or in some cases jointly compiled by the utility and the regulator and then issued as requirements) are. The full report is available at www.nea.fr/html/nsd/docs/2006/cnra-r2006-4.pdf.

Related links

Documents from the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI)
Documents from the Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities (CNRA)
Forthcoming workshops and seminars

Nuclear science

At the American Nuclear Society's Topical Meeting on Reactor Physics, PHYSOR-2006, which was held on 10-14 September 2006 in Vancouver, BC, Canada, the NEA exhibited its work in the following areas: the International Reactor Physics Benchmark Experiments project, www.nea.fr/html/dbprog/IRPhE-latest.htm; the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation project, www.nea.fr/html/science/wpncs/icsbep/; the Joint Evaluated Fission and Fusion project, www.nea.fr/html/dbdata/projects/nds_jef.htm; and radiation shielding and dosimetry (SINBAD), www.nea.fr/html/science/shielding/. The conference was organised and hosted by the Canadian Nuclear Society and co-sponsored by the NEA. More information is available at www.cns-snc.ca/physor2006/. The next topical meeting will be held in Interlaken, Switzerland on 14-18 September 2008.

Data Bank

The annual meeting of the Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) network, a worldwide co-operative network of nuclear data centres, was held at IAEA headquarters on 25-28 September 2006 in Vienna, Austria. Participants discussed the international collaborative efforts to collect and compile experimental nuclear reaction data for the EXFOR database and agreed to modify the output data format to facilitate the interpretation of retrieved data. A working group will be formed to address the accuracy and quality of the EXFOR data. A new structure of the bibliographical database CINDA was presented for further discussion. Links between the CINDA and EXFOR databases have been strengthened by the introduction of an automatic cross-referencing system. It is planned to publish a complete index of reaction data references by the end of 2006. More information is available at www.nea.fr/html/dbdata/projects/nrdc.html.

A page listing all new programs in the last 12 months can be found at: www.nea.fr/html/dbprog/cpsnew.html. Detailed news concerning the computer program service is available at: www.nea.fr/html/dbprog/Newsletter/Whatsnew.htm.

Instructions on retrieving material from the NEA may be found at www.nea.fr. Please note that scientific database access is only available to residents of OECD/NEA Data Bank member countries.