OREANDA-NEWS. April 28, 2010. The International Forum dedicated to the subject: "The role of world nuclear industry in increasing the physical security of nuclear materials" was held in Washington, D.C. The Forum was organized by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) within a set of events concurrent to the Nuclear Security Summit.

The Forum was attended by the leaders of the world’s largest nuclear industry companies, as well as relevant international organizations and national authorities responsible for the development of peaceful use of nuclear energy. Russia was represented at the Forum by Mr. A.A. Grigoriev, General Director of the JSC "Techsnabexport" (NEI member-organization), member of the Board of Governors of the World Nuclear Association (WNA).

In his report Mr. A.A. Grigoriev emphasized the approaches used in Russia to address the issues of increasing physical security of nuclear materials: mitigating the risks of nuclear proliferation through eliminating the source of the threat itself, i.e. the stockpiles of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium, as well as upgrading physical protection and other security measures related to nuclear materials essential for nuclear energy and industry.

Mr. A.A. Grigoriev also underlined that enhancing security during nuclear materials handling could be achieved through complementing the mandatory recommendations based on the proper ensuring physical security and accounting of nuclear materials, by measures of additional certification under the existing standards based on the approach to process and risk management, as well as through adopting the best practices, development and improvement of the standards in a specific industry supported by such best practices.

The JSC "Techsnabexport" and a number of Russian nuclear facilities, including enrichment plants, being committed to the philosophy of overall quality management with aspects related to safe management of nuclear materials, have already adopted the ISO 9000 and 14000 standards. Particularly, the systems of quality and environmental management existing in the JSC "Techsnabexport" were certified and successfully passed the international audit under both ISO 9001 and 14001 standards. Today the JSC "Techsnabexport" is implementing a project aimed at development, adoption and certification of its systems for security and risk management under the latest ISO 28000 standard.