1.1 How can the IRS benefit the decision makers?
Decision makers in the industry, regulatory bodies and nuclear organisations around the world face a new challenging environment of deregulation, privatisation, economic pres-sures and fierce competition in the market place.This new environment forces decision makers to seek new strategies and manage risks and resources with the objective of achieving, among other things, the ultimate common goal of safety. The Incident Reporting System IRS plays a role in this regard by providing information on safety-sig-nificant events from the global nuclear community.
In managing risks and resources, decision makers need credible and reliable information on their managed systems, in particular areas of high risk, in order to prioritise their pro-grams accordingly. They need to get early warning of deteriorating safety performance in the field to address it and maintain the level of safety.They also need to share expe-rience and lessons learned with others, thus making efficient use of their resources.
In regulating the industry, regulators require the industry to report on hazards or poten-tial for hazards so they can tailor effective requirements, guides or standards that address actual or potential hazards in a manner limiting the risk to the public.
Decision makers in the industry or regulatory bodies need to see the big picture. Many seemingly insignificant incidents occur daily in nuclear power plants around the world.
The Safety significance of these may not be seen in any single incident by itself, but can be seen when incidents are grouped together and be subjected to systematic analysis methods.
The IRS is one of the tools which can be used to serve current and future needs of decision makers. It can provide the world experts with information on individual and generic issues of Safety significance, and advance information on deterioriating safety performance. The IRS can also be used, together with other databases, to prioritise those issues of Safety significance which have been reported and to assist in the iden-tification of areas where further resources or research is appropriate. The IRS is a glo-bal contact network and forum which enables safety experts around the world to share and review information lessons learned from events which have been reported.
1.2 The establishment of the IRS
The IRS, which has been established more than 20 years ago, is now jointly operated and managed by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), a semi-autonomous body within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the IAEA.
The IRS as a worldwide system is designed to complement national schemes. It ensu-res proper reporting and feedback of safety significant events in the nuclear power plants for the international community, so that the causes and lessons learned may be disseminated widely. In this way, the IRS plays a role in prevention of the occurrence or recurrence of serious incidents or accidents.
The need for such an international system was reinforced by the obligation under Article 19 of the Convention on Nuclear Safety that Contracting Parties take the appropriate steps to ensure that “programmes to collect and analyze operating expe-rience are established, the results obtained and the conclusions drawn are acted upon and that existing mechanisms are used to share important experience with international bodies and with other operating organizations and regulatory bodies”.
Activities within the IRS extend beyond the exchange and feedback of event informa-tion. Both the NEA and the IAEA have assigned working groups of experts who meet annually and discuss the safety relevance of such events. These groups take part in in-depth discussion of recent important events. Conclusions and recommendations from in-depth discussions are extremely valuable to the nuclear community in helping to enhance the safety of plants in the design and development stage and in operation.
Countries participating in the IRS
1.3 Reporting to the IRS
Reporting to the IRS is based on the voluntary commitment of the participating coun-tries. Each participating country contributes to the system by reporting events and benefits by receiving operating experience reported by other countries. Events repor-ted to the IRS are those of Safety significance for the international community in terms of causes and lessons learned.
Currently, the IRS contains more than 3000 reports gathered from the participating countries over the past 23 years.The annual reporting rate since 1980 is shown in the graph.
At present, less than 80 events are reported per year, from a family of about 500 reac-tors. Although the general quality of the reports exchanged through the IRS has im-proved, the reporting rate has generally declined over the past 15 years, in particular over the last three years. It is likely that the number of reportable events within each member state has decreased over this time period, and this would in turn contribute to a decline in IRS reports. However, another reason could be the lack of resources available in some member states. The decision makers’ role in allocating appropriate resources to the IRS event reporting, within their own organizations is, therefore, important in maintaining the safety benefits that all Member States share.
1.4 Data storage and retrieval
The reported data is maintained in an enhanced system for data storage and informa-tion retrieval known as the Advanced Incident Reporting System (AIRS) database.
Events reported by the participating countries are transcribed to a CD-ROM, which is constantly updated and sent to the national IRS co-ordinators by the IAEA on a quar-terly basis. Currently, efforts are underway to develop a web-based IRS that will be made available to the participating countries through their IRS co-ordinators around the world.