Making better use of operational experience for nuclear power plants safety

Operational experience (OE) has numerous attraction and benefits in all major industrial activities with unique examples in nuclear power sector. It is important to recognize not just potential advantages, but also major difficulties and best methods. Difficulties with limited access to the industry wide OE and proper understanding are not small and they are still developing research and practical issues. This paper presents short overview about related effort to solve some of these difficulties at the European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Energy and Transport in Petten, The Netherlands with conclusions related to the future challenges.