The State Nuclear Regulatory Committee of Ukraine (SNRCU) was established on the fifth of December in 2000. Since 2007 the SNRCU has been celebrating its anniversary conducting the International Annual Topical Meeting on Nuclear and Radiation Safety.

In 2009 the Meeting was organised in cooperation with the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM).

An agenda of the Meeting was developed by joint efforts of all the parties interested in a constructive dialog with a public on issues of nuclear and radiation safety, as the SNRCU’s Chairperson Mrs. Olena Mykolaichuk stated in her opening remarks.

In the frame of the Meeting there were held four panel discussions on the following topics:

·        “Lessons Learnt from Comprehensive Safety Evaluation Using IAEA Safety Review Services”;

·        “Emergency Preparedness”;

·        “Safety of Spent Fuel”;

·        “Lifetime Extension of the NPP Units”.

The discussions were moderated by a member of the SNRCU’s Advisory Council on Reactor Safety Mr. Nur Nigmatullin, the SSM’s representative Mr. Olof Karlberg, the SNRCU’s Deputy Chairperson Mr. Sergiy Bozhko, and the SNRCU’s Deputy Chairperson – the Main State Inspector on Nuclear and Radiation Safety of Ukraine Mr. Myhailo Gashev.

The key elements of the Meeting were presentations and speeches of the representatives of the public and professional community. In particular, a member of the French National Association of Local Informational Commissions on Nuclear Issues (ANCLI) Ms. Valérie Demet contributed to the opening ceremony with a presentation “Aarhus Convention and Nuclear Energy”.

The audience was very impressed with the presentation of the Chairman of the SNRCU’s Public Council Mr. Sergii Kurykin “Why Ukrainian People are so Worried about the Spent Fuel Issues”. The discussion came to conclusion that the public is not sufficiently informed on this issue and it is necessary to support a continuous dialog with a community and its leaders.

Public concerns on the NPP lifetime extension were presented by the Coordinator of the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine Mr. Dmitriy Khmara. A lively discussion demonstrated that society expected more openness and transparency on the raised issues from the operating organization and the state bodies.

Closing the plenary session, the SNRCU’s Chairperson Mrs. Olena Mykolaichuk expressed her gratefulness to the representative of the public, the partners, all the participants of the meeting for being interested in the issues discussed during the panel sessions. She expressed sincere gratitude to the colleagues from other countries for their readiness to share experience and to the representatives of the public organisations for their opinions and proposals that the Ukrainian regulatory body will take into account in its activities.

The Forth International Meeting on Nuclear and Radiation Safety will be devoted to the usage of nuclear power in the context of the Aarhus Convention. All the public organisations interested in this issue were invited to participate in the development of the meeting programme and in the future discussions.