Technical Meeting on Licensing of New Technologies and Approaches to Regulatory Readiness and Cooperation

This technical meeting will consider recent efforts by Member States and the IAEA to prepare for licensing new technologies, including revision of the IAEA safety standards, development of new processes for reviewing designs, adaptation of regulatory frameworks, and relevant regulatory cooperation initiatives. The meeting will also provide an update on the efforts of NHSI Phase II. The IAEA especially welcomes presentations from Member States that highlight examples or lessons learned from reviews of SMR designs and regulatory engagements with other new technologies and from efforts aimed at ensuring regulatory readiness, including participation in relevant bilateral and multilateral cooperative arrangements.

Objectives

The purpose of the meeting is to enhance the knowledge and capacity of Member States by sharing experiences and discussing challenges in relation to the licensing of new technologies, such as SMRs and microreactors, in addition to approaches to regulatory readiness and cooperation.

The meeting will also be an opportunity for participants to provide feedback on the tools and publications under development for NHSI Phase II and other IAEA activities.

Target Audience

The meeting is open to participants from regulatory bodies, technical support organizations and operator organizations from all Member States currently operating nuclear power plants, those embarking on a nuclear power programme or considering expanding their nuclear power programmes, as well as interested international organizations.

Topics

The event will address experiences from Member States and the IAEA to prepare for licensing new technologies, including:

• Examples of application and/or revision of safety standards, regulatory guides, regulations and regulatory processes to consider the unique features, deployment models and supply chain of new technologies in preparation or during licensing processes.
• Examples and lessons learned on regulatory cooperation for the review of SMR designs during pre-licensing or licensing processes.
• Examples of benchmarking, comparisons among regulatory expectations or other efforts that may facilitate the harmonisation of regulatory approaches to consider new technologies and their supply chain.
• Examples of regulatory readiness programmes to consider new technologies, including regulatory capacity plans, training and lessons learned.

Participation and Registration

All persons wishing to participate in the event have to be designated by an IAEA Member State or should be members of organizations that have been invited to attend.

In order to be designated by an IAEA Member State or invited organization, participants are requested to submit their application via the InTouch+ platform (https://intouchplus.iaea.org) to the competent national authority (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Permanent Mission to the IAEA or National Atomic Energy Authority) or organization for onward transmission to the IAEA by 11 July 2025, following the registration procedure in InTouch+, as noted in the Information Sheet.

Selected participants will be informed in due course on the procedures to be followed with regard to administrative and financial matters.

Papers and Presentations

The IAEA encourages participants to give presentations on the work of their respective institutions that falls under the topics listed in above Topics Section.

Participants who wish to give presentations are requested to submit an abstract of their work. The abstract will be reviewed as part of the selection process for presentations. The abstract should be in A4 page format, should extend to no more than one page (including figures and tables) and should not exceed 500 words. It should be sent electronically to Mr Brett Rini, the Scientific Secretary of the event (at b.rini@iaea.org), not later than 18 July 2025. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their proposed presentations by 15 August 2025.

Key Deadlines and Dates

11 July 2025: Deadline to receive nominations from Member States.

18 July 2025: Deadline for submissions of presentation abstracts.

15 August 2025: Notification of presentation acceptance.

20-24 October 2025: Technical Meeting dates.