Research Reactors: Addressing Challenges and Opportunities to Ensure Effectiveness and Sustainability

The International Conference on Research Reactors, held every four years, is one of the IAEA activities supporting countries in addressing the opportunities and challenges related to research reactor programmes. This publication presents a summary and other material from the 2019 conference. The main challenges the research reactor community is facing include the need to ensure regulatory effectiveness, manage the ageing of the facilities, ensure knowledge transfer, and improve utilization programmes and strategic planning. This conference provided a forum for reactor operators, managers, users, regulators, designers and suppliers to exchange best practices and learn from each other, particularly in addressing common issues, challenges and strategies. This resulted in a publication which provides a summary of the conference, the major findings and conclusions of the sessions, and the opening and closing addresses. The accompanying online files include the individual technical papers and presentations.