Page 23 - Nuclear Plant Journal Digital Edition: January - February 2013
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Nuclear Plant Journal, January-February 2013
23
in only few years’ time, and we see that
the UAE is really a success story. They
are almost the only new entrant country,
where I see such positive development.
I’m very concerned with all the
others, which I have seen because you
hardly find a regulator there. European
Union has many programs to support new
entrant regulators, but when EU experts
are going to those countries, they hardly
find any counterpart to talk with. This is
a problem, which I tried to emphasize
also in the Extraordinary Meeting on
Convention on Nuclear Safety, on the last
week of August 2012 in Vienna. Among
the global community concerned with
nuclear safety, it is commonly understood
that the infrastructure is most important
for the new entrants, and the political
decision makers must understand that.
You can look around all those countries,
which are planning to start their nuclear
program, and ask whether they have any
strong infrastructure.
2.
How can the regulatory systems be
strengthened?
The basic prerequisite is of course
a sound legislation that establishes the
licensing and regulatory framework and
gives necessary powers to the regulatory
body. Then you just need some strong and
competent individuals who’ll establish
the system.
In Finland, my predecessor as the
regulatory head was a very strong person,
although he was only 37 years of age
when Finland started its nuclear program.
However, he was enforcing strongly
his views as concerns safety features
required from the nuclear power plants
and he insisted establishing a the strong
regulatory system within the government
structure.
At the same time as Finland started its
nuclear program we had two neighboring
countries with large programs but no
regulatory body at all. We bought our
plants from those countries, but based
on the main contracts with suppliers we
have been able to enforce meeting of the
requirements as we wanted and we have
seen the excellent results of 35 years’
operation.
3.
How do the nuclear regulatory
agencies worldwide utilize consultants,
older than 62?
This has not been much discussed.
In some countries like in the UK, the
situation has been arranged so that people,
even if they retire from the regulatory
body, can still continue working on a
different contract. Also in Finland where
many people have recently retired from
the regulatory body, I was authorized to
implement my principle that all competent
people can continue working on special
contract as long as they are interested and
capable to work. They don’t have the civil
servant status, so that they are not making
decisions, but they are participating as
experts to the work.
4.
How do the utilities worldwide
share operational, construction, and
maintenance experience with each
other?
Nowadays, there is quite a good
exchange of operating experience inside
WANO. The information is not made
available to the regulators, but the system
functions among the operators and the
operators are sharing very efficiently
information on what’s going on at the
operating plants.
Information on construction experi-
ences is also being exchanged to some
extent under the Nuclear Energy Agency
of the OECD. IAEA has its Incident Re-
porting System but I’m afraid it is mostly
functioning on the operating plants. So,
mostly it is in different conferences where
information on construction experiences
can be shared.
In Finland we have organized twice
an international one week workshop
dedicated
on
experiences
from
construction of Olkiluoto-3 project.
These workshops in the fall of 2009 and
2011were quite big events that attracted
some 250 experts from all over the world.
We talked openly about our experiences
and problems during the construction but
I have not seen similar events organized
elsewhere. We have also reported our
experiences regularly in US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission’s Regulatory
Information Conference (RIC) held
annually in Washington, D.C.
5.
How can the nuclear industry share
manufacturing defects, similar to the
aerospace industry?
The information on manufacturing
defects and design errors observed during
construction or operation should be
shared much more efficiently than today.
It is not as systematic in the nuclear
field as in the airplane manufacturing.
Each airplane has a home country, where
theplane ismanufacturedand the regulator
of that country is responsible to license
that airplane. If there are problems they
are responsible to communicate these to
all users of similar planes.
In the nuclear business, it is not
that well advanced but information is
disseminated only on ad hoc basis every
now and then.
6.
How does the IAEA and different
countries currently handling the incident
reports?
I have tried to promote operating
experience feedback in general both in the
European and in the global scene but it’s
very difficult because everybody agrees
in principle that operating experience
feedback is important. In practice, it is not
a priority to anybody. For the regulators
there is always something more urgent
to do than sharing information on the
operational experience, and it is something
