The objective of the OSART programme is to help the member states to step up the operational safety of their nuclear power stations and to promote the continuous development of safety via the dissemination of information on good practices. The OSART teams do not to seek to assess a power station's implementation of national or international regulations, nor to evaluate a site's general level of safety. Their task is not to compare or classify the general safety performance of nuclear power stations or to set up a ranking among them.
The system of reference used by the reviewers incorporates the best international practices observed during OSART's missions around the world as well as the content of the guides, or reference systems, published by the IAEA.
The international teams set up to serve the needs of their missions are backed by the IAEA and intervene at a site only at the request of the concerned country's safety authorities. In February 2005, the Belgian authorities submitted an application for an OSART mission in Belgium. The selected site was Tihange but the Doel site is expected to host an OSART mission in the forthcoming years. The OSART mission will be conducted from 5 to 25 May 2007, at one of the Tihange site's three units.
