Recent IAEA Activities in Support of Safety Assessment Capabilities

One of the key missions of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is to develop nuclear safety standards and, based on these standards, to promote the achievement and maintenance of high levels of safety in the applications of nuclear energy. In the context of this mission the IAEA conducts programmes that support the safety assessment capabilities of its Member States. This paper focuses on two new long term technical activities specific to safety assessment. These concern the issue of uncertainties in deterministic evaluation of safety, and the role of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods in safety assessments. In addition, a new IAEA initiative involving the collaboration of Member States in the area of advanced safety assessment tools is presented.