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IAEA Takes Part in Canadian Nuclear Emergency Exercise

The Agency's Incident and Emergency Centre regularly holds emergency exercises in which Agency staff tackle mock scenarios involving nuclear or radiological emergencies. (Photo: D. Calma/IAEA) 

Emergency exercises are part of everyday life at the IAEA. The Agency's Incident and Emergency Centre (IEC) regularly holds emergency exercises in which Agency staff tackles mock scenarios involving nuclear or radiological emergencies. Such exercises maintain the IAEA staff's preparedness to implement the Agency's tasks in response to nuclear or radiological incidents and emergencies.

But an exercise held in May 2014 was different from these internal IAEA exercises. The scenario had not been created by Agency staff. Instead, Exercise Unified Response, as it was codenamed, was created by Canadian officials as part of their work to further improve the country's preparedness for nuclear or radiological incidents and emergencies.

The IAEA staff gathered at the IEC joined more than 50 Canadian government agencies and regional organizations. The three-day exercise involved a mock emergency at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario province.

As the emergency scenario unfolded, IAEA staff developed an assessment of the situation and a prognosis for how it could develop. They then discussed these conclusions with the official counterparts at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. This task was given to the Agency by Member States when, in 2011, they endorsed the IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety following the accident at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

"Taking part in this large-scale Canadian national exercise helped us sharpen our skills by testing our ability to provide an assessment and prognosis in a real-time scenario," said Elena Buglova, Head of the IEC. "This was the first time the IEC was given an opportunity to test its capabilities to perform assessment and prognosis in a Member State national-level exercise, and we found it to be a useful complement to our own exercises."

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