Mr. Alexander Bychkov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy, visited KAERI on 11 October 2011. He was invited to a speaker at the IAEA co-hosted the five-day "International Workshop on Public Information and Understanding to Introduce a New Nuclear Power Plant" which brought together communication experts on nuclear power generation from across the world. The event was organized to share their knowhow on increasing public awareness of nuclear plants and talk about misconceptions on nuclear power in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident early this year, particularly with regards to safety.

During the meeting with Dr. Y. H. Jung, KAERI president, Mr. Bychrov have shown his keen interests in the whole range of KAERI research activities. The area of his particular interests is SMART and he mentioned that SMART is in the most advance stage in terms of SMR development and deployment in the world. He also added that IAEA has provided necessary technical support to the emerging countries that are interested in introducing SMR in their own countries. IAEA DDG appreciated KAERI’s extra-budgetary contribution to the IAEA programmes and Cost Free Expert(CFE) service for the NE Department. KAERI already made a pledge to provide extra-budgetary contribution of US$100,000 for the IAEA organized "Workshop on SMR Technology Assessment" to be held 5-9 December 2011 while expressing his hope that this contribution will provide a significant momentum to make tangible progress on the development and applications of SMR.

He noted that learning lessons from the Fukushima accident, IAEA is considering mapping out a plan to establish the International Research Center where state-of-the-art research centers and facilities in the IAEA member states can be networked and designated as Center of Excellence for the purpose of drawing out best solutions through the assessment of fuel assembly behaviors under severe accident and other related activities. He said that this new initiative will greatly contribute towards the enhancement of NPP safety once materialized.

In recognition of the increasing interests in SMRs shown by countries  all over the world, KAERI has organized a "technical exhibition on SMART technology" in conjunction with the IAEA general conference at the IAEA headquarters last month.

He made a tour of ATLAS facility, Radioisotope Production facility, Cold Neutron Research Facility and SMART exhibition hall.