International Activities of the ENIQ Task Group on Risk

The European Network for Inspection Qualification (ENIQ) has been launched in 1992, in response to increasing recognition of the importance of qualification of NDE systems used in in-service inspection programs for nuclear power plants. Later ENIQ established a Task Group on Risk (TGR), aimed at working towards developing best practice for risk-informed in-service inspection methodologies, with the objective of increasing the safety of European nuclear power plants. In March 2005 TGR published a European framework document for risk-informed in-service inspection. More recently, TGR has been working at producing more detailed recommended practices and discussion documents on several RI-ISI related issues. TGR has published reports on following topics: the role of ISI within the philosophy of defence-in-depth; the verification and validation of structural reliability models to be used in RI-ISI programs; the use of expert panels in RI-ISI; the applicability of RI-ISI to the reactor pressure vessel; and the updating of RI-ISI programs. Work is ongoing to develop documents on other RI-ISI related issues, such as probability of detection curves. In addition, TGR has been active in initiating international projects, such as the JRC-OECD/NEA coordinated RI-ISI benchmark exercise (RISMET), and a project on the relationship between inspection qualification and RI-ISI. This paper describes the most recent activities and publications of the ENIQ TGRJRC.F.5-Nuclear Reactor Safety Assessmen