New and recently finalised activities within the NKS Programmes for Nordic cooperation on nuclear reactor safety and emergency preparedness

Over the years, NKS has provided funding for hundreds of research activities in fields comprising reactor safety, decommissioning, nuclear and radiological emergency preparedness, and management of radioactive waste. Advanced technologies and methods developed under the NKS framework have been used within the Nordic countries as well as internationall y. Two programme areas are defined under the NKS platform: The NKS-R programme on nuclear reactor safety and the NKS-B programme on emergency preparedness. Three articles, giving an introduction to NKS and its two programmes, were published in Radiation Regulator last year. This paper is aimed at providing a total overview of the NKS activities running in 2013 and 2014. Introduction After the annual call for proposals for new activities, members of the NKS board evaluate the proposals with respect to how well they meet the key objectives of NKS. Among these key objectives are: To maintain and strengthen Nordic competence, to develop Nordic cooperation, and to support work, which is relevant to Nordic authorities, organisations, industries and university departments. A funding decision for one year is then made at a board meeting in the beginning of each year. Although more than one million euros was available for NKS to support activities in 2014, this year’s decision was unusually difficult because of the large number of high quality proposals. Many NKS activities running in 2013 have very recently been concluded, and all final activity reports are available cost-free on the NKS website. A number of the activity consortia from 2013 have requested and received funding from NKS for additional studies in 2014 with an expanded scope, and also a number of completely new activities have commenced in 2014. This paper gives short descriptions of each of these