¡¡NEW DELHI, Aug. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- Global experts will gather at India's Kalpakkam nuclear power plant in southern Tamil Nadu statethis month to review risks from natural disasters like the tsunamiin December that led to flooding in the vital installation.

    The five-day International Workshop on External Flooding Hazards at Nuclear Power Plant Sites will begin Aug. 29 at the Kalpakkam plant, which withstood the giant waves that engulfed the small township in Tamil Nadu when the tsunami struck Dec. 26, 2004.

    "Learning from the lessons of this latest tsunami as well as from other flood events that occurred in the past will allow the review, revision and expansion, as appropriate for the agency safety standards on external flooding hazards," Ken Brockman, nuclear installation safety director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a statement Monday.

    The 17-country workshop at Kalpakkam will have Japan providing guidance on how it has put in place systems to protect reactors against earthquakes and tsunamis, it said. Countries like France, whose Le Blayais reactor was hit by severe storms in December 1999,will also present case studies.

    Battered but safe, the Kalpakkam plant shut down automatically after detectors tripped it as the water level rose. There was no release of radioactivity. The reactor was restarted Jan. 1, 2005, six days after the catastrophic waves struck India's east coast.

    The IAEA issued the Kalpakkam reactor a clean bill of health inthe tsunami's wake, rating the event a 'zero' or of 'no safety significance' on the international nuclear events scale.

    Around 3.5 cubic meters of seawater, sludge and muck had entered a construction pit at the Kalpakkam plant, where the foundations for a new Fast Breeder Reactor were being built.

    Water also entered a pump house for cooling water, tripping the nuclear power plant to shut down. The IAEA has stringent safety standards designed to guard nuclear power plants against natural calamities like earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding, tsunamis and cyclones.

    The non-legally binding guidelines cover site and design requirements as well as appropriate monitoring and warning systems.Enditem