The IAEA helps countries to fulfill their responsibilities for nuclear safety
through expert peer reviews such as OSART.
OSART stands for Operational Safety Review Team.
And what it involves is the IAEA bringing a team
of international experts to a nuclear power plant
to review how that plant performs against the IAEA safety standards.
States invite the IAEA to conduct OSART reviews to improve safety at nuclear power plants.
The IAEA has led more than 200 missions
since OSART began in 1982
helping to strengthen nuclear safety at power plants worldwide.
Such a program gives us an excellent opportunity
to be evaluated by a team of sound experts
guided by the safety standards of the IAEA.
Furthermore, this allows us to share experiences and good practices with other installations around the world.
The experts examine all safety aspects during the mission.
When we come to a site the first thing we do is
we meet the management team and our counterparts
and we do first of all a plant tour and that gives us a general impression of how the plant is.
Then we go into a series of review periods
where all of our technical experts sit with counterparts from the plant
and they look at the processes that the plant has in place the procedures that they use
and then they go out into the field and see whether those processes
and procedures are being actively used and whether they're being effective
in helping the plant  to achieve a higher level of safety.
Each three-week mission makes recommendations
for enhancing safety based on the IAEA safety standards
and notes good practices to share with the nuclear industry globally.
Usually a follow-up mission later evaluates progress
in line with recommendations from the initial review.
One of the things I particularly like about the OSART program
is that, it's not static, it's evolved over the years as the industry has evolved
It's always changing, it's always evolving and it's always kept fresh to meet the needs of the industry.
We're always trying to ramp up standards.
It doesn't matter how good you get we can always be better.
