Dear Colleagues,

The first “Standard Representation Format for PSA Models Technical Working Group Meeting” was held at Electricité de France on June 19th. We had 12 people in attendance. The morning was spent in review of the Gösgen meeting and a discussion of issues to consider and actions to accomplish in the coming months. The afternoon was devoted to a review of the first draft of the standard, with Antoine Rauzy leading the review.

Thanks to Richard Quatrain, Mohamed Hibti, and Electricité de France for a perfect venue in the City of Lights.

The morning discussion covered the following:

• The standard should be applicable to industry basic event databases.
• We want the standard to be able to interface with HRA software such as operator event trees and the EPRI HRA Calculator.
• We need to extend the format in version 2 to include Markov processes, Bayesian analysis, and fragility analysis.
• The Working Group for Industry Data will be lead by Mark Reinhart of the IAEA.
• The Working Group for Algorithms will be lead by Olivier Nusbaumer of KKL
• The Working Group for Data Visualization will be lead by Woody Epstein of ABS.
• In the future we will consider inclusion of BDMP (Boolean Driven Markov Processes), dynamic event trees, and FMEA.

We presented the web site for the Open PSA Initiative, which can be found at www.open-psa.org. ARBoost Technologies, under the direction of Web Master Pablo Rauzy, will have make the site live by August 1st, though it is available for comments and review now.

We also discussed a more formal organization for the Open Initiative for Next Generation PSA. Suggestions ranged from creating a non-profit organization with membership subscriptions, to creating the organization under the umbrella of an existing organization such as PSAM. We decided that we will hold a post-workshop meeting to discuss and decide in November, after the second “Representation Format for PSA Models Technical Working Group Meeting” at the IAEA (see below).

The following announcements were also made:

• The US meeting sponsored by EPRI will be held in Washington, DC on October 2n
• An introductory meeting in Japan for Asia will be held in Osaka in late August, sponsored by NEL (date to be announced).
• The second workshop for the standard format will be in Vienna in November, sponsored by the IAEA (date to be announced).
• Dr. Vincent Ho, the chairperson of PSAM 9, has kindly allowed us to hold sessions for presenting ideas and work in the Next Generation PSA in Hong Kong in 2008; we will put all information on the Open PSA web site.

The afternoon was devoted to review and discussions of the standard draft presented by Antoine Rauzy. The draft is now being changed to reflect the comments and ideas of the working group, and will be both placed on the web site and eMailed by August 1st. A congratulations is due to all of the working group participants, as the discussions were extremely technical and rigorous. We adjourned at 17h30; a long and fruitful day.

To revive our spirits, we reconvened at 19h00 at the restaurant le Dôme, where a splendid dinner was hosted by ABS.

Steve Epstein