A NEUTRON IN NORTH AMERICA is the same as a neutron in Europe. But while the physics does not change, national regulators' interpretation of the risks, and how best to manage them, vary widely. This limits the wide deployment of standardised reactor designs.High-level safety and regulatory requirements have been implemented and agreed through consensus at international level through the Convention of Nuclear Safety and the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) safety standards. So why is it that we continue to build different versions of the same reactor design in different countries?In most cases national regulatory requirements were developed using national experience and implemented to support national programmes. During this time little thought was put into aligning approaches between different countries.
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