The current COVID-19 pandemic has deeply impacted numerous countries around the world. Its effects are not only limited to obvious societal areas such as healthcare, freedom of movement or economics in general, but also relate to various aspects of nuclear safety. Ensuring sufficient availability of operational staff, maintaining safety-related inspections or enabling telework during lockdown are prime examples of the issues to be tackled by respective organisations.

To further the exchange on respective challenges for technical safety organisations, ETSON has invited its members to share relevant information during an online workshop in 2020. The network´s aim was to identify lessons learned as well as specific aspects to be investigated in greater detail. Now ETSON has published a workshop report which summarises the contributions of the partaking organisations. The aspects addressed in the report include generic issues such as the provision of sufficient key staff and challenges arising from extensive telework as well as the organisational responses of nuclear operators (i. a. regarding outage management and inspections) and possible risks for nuclear safety related to the pandemic.

>>To the full report