An IAEA-led international team of nuclear reactor safety experts completed a safety review mission on 18 February at the High Flux Reactor (HFR) at Petten, in the Netherlands. The mission was conducted at the request of the Government of the Netherlands to review a set of previous evaluations made by the Dutch regulatory authority regarding the reactor´s safety. The IAEA mission made a series of recommendations to enhance the safety of the year-long temporary restart. The recommendations included:
- Performance of the monitoring system for leaks should be rigorously checked during the interim year of operation;
- Temporary operation of the HFR cannot be extended beyond 1 March 2010; and
- In case of any detected leakage from the coolant pipes, the reactor should be shut down immediately and repaired before restarting.
The international team was composed of one IAEA staff member and five external experts from Argentina, Canada, France, India and South Africa. The IAEA´s main conclusions and recommendations were presented in The Hague to the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment and several other ministries. The team also provided a summary of its findings to the Netherlands Regulatory Authority. The team´s final report will be submitted within two weeks. The HFR at Petten is one of five research reactors in the world that produces radioactive medical isotopes, used an estimated 40 million times annually for cancer treatment and the diagnosis of heart attacks. Prolonged outages at any of these five reactors have a far-reaching impact on medical treatments and diagnoses for patients around the globe. Since August 2008, the HFR reactor has been in shut-down status due to corrosion of pipes in its primary cooling circuit. The Nuclear Research & Consultancy Group (NRG), the operating organization for Petten, proposed a one-year restart of the HFR reactor, which was approved by the Dutch regulatory body. The reactor then resumed operation on 12 February 2009. One of the main requirements of the regulatory authority was that the reactor must be immediately shut down if any leakage is detected. The IAEA strongly supports this requirement. The reactor is authorized by the regulatory authority of the Netherlands to remain operational for an interim year until 1 March 2010 to allow for preparation of repairs. Repair of the pipe degradations is expected to last several months and is scheduled to begin in March 2010.