Page 32 - July-August 2012
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Profitable
Nuclear
Power
Generation
By Jukka Laaksonen, Rusatom Overseas.
Jukka Laaksonen
Jukka Laaksonen is the Vice President,
Rusatom Overseas. Laaksonen worked
in nuclear
regulation for 38
years and the last
15 years of that as
chief regulator in
Finland. In 1981-
82, he worked for
14 months with
the U.S.NRC and
in 1987-89 for
two years with
the IAEA. He was
the Chairman of
the Committee for
Nuclear Regulatory
Activities, one
of the standing
OECD/NEA
Committees from 1999-2007, and in
2009-2011 he was Chairman of WENRA,
Western European Nuclear Regulators’
Association.
IAEA's CNS sets clear
obligations to operators
The Convention on Nuclear Safety
(CNS), adopted in 1994, is the one and
only document that has legal power in the
nuclear safety area in all countries with
operating NPPs.
Article 9 of the CNS states: “Each
Contracting Party shall ensure that prime
responsibility for the safety of a nuclear
installation rests with the holder of the rel-
evant license and shall take the appropri-
ate steps to ensure that each such license
holder meets its responsibility.” Article
10 requires that all organizations engaged
in nuclear power production establish
policies that give due priority to nuclear
safety. Article 16 obliges to establish
on-site emergency
plans that cover the
activities to be car-
ried out in the event
of an emergency and
are routinely tested.
Article 19 empha-
sizes the importance
of analyzing the op-
erating experiences
and requires that
the results obtained
and the conclusions
drawn are acted
upon.
In the regional
level, the Council
of the European
Union Directive that was issued in 2009
and has been ratified to the legislation
of all EU countries is consistent with
the CNS. In addition, it states in Article
6, the following: “Member States shall
ensure that the national framework in
place requires license holders, under the
supervision of the competent regulatory
authority, to regularly assess and verify,
and continuously improve, as far as
reasonably achievable, the nuclear
safety of their nuclear installations in a
systematic and verifiable manner.” Thus
it confirms what the European heads of
the national nuclear safety authorities,
members of Western European Nuclear
Regulator's Association (WENRA),
agreed already in 2005: “we commit
ourselves to a continuous improvement
of nuclear safety in our respective
countries”.
The common position adopted by the
regulators in Europe, i.e. emphasis on the
importance of continuous improvement
of both NPP safety and regulatory
effectiveness was not equally evident
in countries outside Europe. However,
after the accident in Fukushima the
idea of continuous improvement seems
to be recognized more widely. My
conclusion from the recent international
discussions among the regulators is
that no complacency is accepted and no
operator should claim that it has achieved
such an adequate level of safety, which
does not require any more efforts for its
enhancement.
High level of safety
is a cornerstone for
profitable nuclear power
generation
In many countries there are nuclear
power plants that have demonstrated an
exemplary way of producing power and
have achieved trust of the general public
in their neighborhood. These plants have
the following attributes of successful
operation:
competitive production costs,
•
power available when it is most
•
needed,
no harmful impact to the
•
environment,
low worker doses,
•
infrequent abnormal events, not
•
causing significant production losses,
and
small accident risk, andalsoperceived
•
like that by the general public.
Healthy cost structure of a successful
plant covers not only direct operating,
maintenance, fuel and waste management
costs. Adequate funds have to be allocated
in annual budgets also to:
regular equipment modernization,
•
safety backfits,
•
ensuring adequate knowledge and
•
skills of the staff, and
safety research maintaining and
•
improving knowledge base.
Financing these costs is achievable
without endangering the competitiveness
when the operator has established a
positive feedback loop: steadily high
capacity factor permits adequate
32
Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2012
This article is based on a presentation
by Jukka Laaksonen at the Special
WANO Session at the Atomexpo 2012
Conference in Moscow, Russia on June
4, 2012.
