Rabat, 22 December 2025 – As part of its ongoing commitment to strengthening nuclear safety regulatory capacities in Africa, the Moroccan Agency for Nuclear and Radiological Safety and Security (AMSSNuR) hosted a regional workshop in Rabat from 15 to 19 December 2025, dedicated to the acquisition of tools and competencies for the technical safety assessment of small and medium-sized reactors, as well as their regulatory oversight.

Organized under the European cooperation project “Strengthening Nuclear Safety Regulatory Capacity in Africa”, the workshop aimed to equip representatives of African regulatory authorities with nuclear safety analysis tools based on both deterministic safety analysis (DSA) and probabilistic safety analysis (PSA). These approaches are widely used to assess safety options for power reactors and their operational performance.

Within this framework, participants were able to deepen their understanding of DSA and PSA approaches as applied to SMR concepts, highlighting the technical specificities, challenges, and regulatory requirements that must be taken into account during the licensing process of these emerging technologies. The workshop also addressed the global status of SMR development, the technical elements to be included in a safety analysis report, the available simulation tools and their capabilities, as well as the validation methods used to support regulatory assessments.

Supervised by European experts from BelV (Belgium) and GRS (Germany), the workshop benefited around twenty African specialists representing nuclear safety authorities and operators from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Morocco.

On this occasion, participants reviewed national presentations on the state of development of regulatory, human, technical, and organizational capacities in their respective countries. This exercise enabled the exchange of experiences, the sharing of best practices, and the identification of priorities in safety analysis and regulatory preparedness for SMRs, thereby contributing to a shared understanding of key challenges and to the harmonization of practices at the regional level.

In 2025, AMSSNuR further strengthened its contribution to the European INSC project by hosting eight regional workshops covering nuclear safety, emergency preparedness, and leadership development. These events brought together nearly one hundred experts from various countries, illustrating AMSSNuR’s continued commitment to capacity building for African authorities and to the consolidation of South–South cooperation.