Radics Represented Ukraine at IAEA Technical Working Group Meeting on NPP I&C

This year the TWG Meeting on NPP I&C was held from May 31 to June 02, 2023 at IAEA Headquarters in Vienna. Radics Deputy Chief Operating Officer Nataliia Rvachova was nominated to represent Ukraine at one of the most important IAEA technical forums.

During the TWG meeting the nuclear power countries' ambassadors shared their experience in the area of instrumentation and control and human machine interface technologies in nuclear power plants and gave recommendations on the activities that could assist nuclear power facility operators, licensing authorities and vendors.

Although Nataliia’s presentation was made at the end of Day 2 (U-Ukraine), it raised a big interest and was followed by many questions. Talking about I&C modernization at Ukrainian NPPs Nataliia emphasized the successful experience of integrated-based approach for I&C upgrade solutions which has been used in Ukrainian NPPs since 2010 and has proven technical efficiency and cost effectiveness. The audience's special attention was paid to the part of the presentation which demonstrated how Ukrainian NPPs have been operating under extreme conditions. Three detailed cases on I&C functioning under severe missile attacks, losing power supply and outrageous military occupation by russian federation were shocking and yet demonstrated the necessity of combined international efforts to keep NPPs safe and secure.

The Country presentation Nataliia finalized with thoughtful recommendations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which included considering human factors for NPP safety, focusing on the resilience of the distributed grid power system as a critical element of NPP safety, and collecting experiences and developing unified approaches to modernization of safety-critical I&C systems.