Participants in the Seminar are Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Le Dinh Tien, Deputy General Director of IAEA Denis Flory, the delegates from regulatory bodies of RCF participating countries including Russia, Japan, United States, France, UK, South Korea, Pakistan, NEA, and the representatives of relevant ministries, agencies of VN.

Opening the seminar, Minister Nguyen Quan said ensuring safe operation of nuclear power plant is one of the top priorities of the Government of Vietnam in its nuclear power program. To ensure the safety of nuclear power plant, in addition to responsibility of the investor, VN needs to build a nuclear regulatory body with sufficient competencies and authorities.

According to Minister, tasks and powers of the nuclear regulatory body that is VARANS under MOST are defined in the Atomic Energy Law. However, the current competencies of VARANS don’t meet requirements of the national nuclear regulatory body in terms of staff, technical competencies and decision-making. So, the MOST has built a project of strengthening and upgrading VARANS as well as reviewing to amend inadequacy in licensing  NPP of VN.

Minister also proposed, the Forum as well as IAEA and NEA help Vietnam to clarify the necessary requirements and guidance of building the national nuclear regulatory body; training managers, technicians; investment consulting and direct support for building the Technical Support Organization (TSO) for nuclear regulatory body and; coordinating multilateral and bilateral cooperation in nuclear regulatory field with Vietnam in order to effectively use activities of international cooperation under the Forum.

Mr. Denis Flory, IAEA Deputy Director General, said embarking on a NPP is joining the Global Nuclear Safety and Security Framework and committing to its components. He also emphasized, an independent, effective and robust regulatory body is essential to ensure a safe and secure of nuclear power program.

At the Seminar, delegates from NEA/OECD, Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service of Russia (Rostechnadzor), Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization (JNES), United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US.NRC), Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) of France, Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA), Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) of UK and Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety (KINS) shared information and experiences on the importance and necessity of nuclear regulatory body as well as national requirements and lessons learned related to the building the national nuclear regulatory body.

Regulatory Cooperation Forum (RCF) was established in June 2010. The IAEA was invited to provide the Secretariat to the RCF. Forum includes representatives of nuclear regulatory bodies of countries with advanced nuclear industry and embarking countries such as Vietnam. In addition, there are other international organizations such as NEA/OECD. The objective of the Forum is to assist embarking countries to build the national nuclear regulatory body with sufficient competencies and authorities consistency with international standards.