Page 36 - July-August 2012
Basic HTML Version
36
Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2012
investments in the safe and reliable
operation. As experiences at many plants
have shown, striving towards good
performance is in the long term always
better than short term savings achieved
by cutting maintenance and operating
costs.
It should go without saying that good
management practices are necessary for
safe and profitable production. These
should include:
motivating each individual to
•
responsible work with self-imposed
quality goals and professional pride,
thorough planning and detailed
•
scheduling of outages, supported by
pre-exercised conduct of the most
demanding works,
continuous
and
determined
•
development of work methods,
procedures and staff qualifications,
and
maintaining
wide
technical
•
knowledge and skills within the
operating organization.
Safety Culture needs to
show up in daily life
The arrangements and measures
by the operators shall reflect their
understanding that they bear the ultimate
responsibility for safety.
Strive for excellence, rather than just
fulfillment of regulatory rules, shall be
self evident in any operating organization.
The operators following this line set their
own performance standards for activities
they find most important to ensure reliable
and thus safe operations. Striving for
excellence also means that the operator
has a steady investment pro-gram. Such
a program is needed to keep the material
condition of the facility at least at the
same level it used to be after the first start
up, and to improve reliability and safety.
Safety and quality must have
higher priority than costs and schedule.
This message has to be very clear and
transmitted by the operator’s management
to all levels of the organization and also
to all contractor organizations working
for the operator. Management’s acts
Profitable Nuclear...
and decisions have to be consistent
with the message. The critical moments
demonstrating real management attitude
are situations when a decision has to be
made on whether to continue production
when someproblemin theplant equipment
has appeared or whether to shutdown and
fix the problem. Another situation is when
new lessons on risks have been learned
from operating experience or research:
are some actions needed to evaluate the
risks at own plant and to possibly act
upon them?
Major differences in
investments to safety of
operating NPPs
International peer reviews have
given a good opportunity to compare
both regulatory policies and the policies
of operators in different countries. The
IAEA has since 1982 arranged OSART
missions to NPPs and since the end of
1990’s also the activities of national
regulators have been assessed on the
IRRS missions. In the past one year, there
was an extensive European peer review
as part of targeted safety re-assessments
(“stress tests”) that were conducted in the
aftermath of Fukushima accident. I have
attended a number of those reviews and
have noted major differences between the
countries and the NPP’s.
As I stated above, the policy inEurope
promoted by WENRA and now also
required by the European Nuclear Safety
Directive is to continuously improve
nuclear safety. However, a consistent
implementation of that policy has not
yet been commonly achieved at the plant
level. Some operators have followed this
practice pro-actively already since 1980’s.
As a basis for safety enhancement, the
operators have used their own living
PSA’s that always provide a “top ten”
list of risks that could be reduced. Other
operators have been more in a reactive
mode and have taken actions only when
some major events have been reported
worldwide and have generally led to
corrective measures. The recent report on
the European “stress tests” very clearly
pointed out areas, where some operators
have conducted major backfits of the
plants, while others have done no changes
in the plant hardware to address the same
safety issues. The accident in Fukushima
has now influenced the attitudes and
policies of operators, and I expect to see
a more harmonized approach in the entire
Europe.
In Russia, the shortcomings in safety
systems of the operating facilities were
recognized already after the accident in
Chernobyl, and this prompted planning
of large upgrade programs at all plants.
Planning of these Russian programs was
supported by the IAEA that organized in
the early 1990’s several design review
missions to Russian plants. After these
missions, a set of IAEAreportsoftencalled
“issue books” were written separately for
each type of plant as a joint effort between
the Russian and international experts.
These gave practical guidance for safety
upgrades, and the implementation of the
recommendations took place at the end
of 1990’s when the economic situation
at the Russian facilities had significantly
improved and the necessary investments
could be made. The spirit of continuous
improvement has prevailed recently, as I
have seen on safety evaluation missions
that I have conducted together with my
Finnish colleagues and the Russian
regulators to some of the Russian NPPs.
As concerns the situation in the USA,
the policy question on whether to require
maintaining or continuously upgrading
the safety has been discussed for years
between regulators in connection with
the OECD/NEA co-operation. In the
report of the International Regulatory
Review Service (IRRS) mission that in
October 2010 reviewed the U.S.NRC
activities in regulating the operating
reactors, a paragraph in the Executive
Summary stated the common view of
the international regulators’ team is as
follows: “The NRC has a strong drive
for continuous improvement in its own
performance and has well achieved its
goals. Industry performance has also
shown improvements as demonstrated
