Preparing
for the Best
Governance
By Jaques Regaldo, World Association of
Nuclear Operators (WANO).
Jacques Regaldo
Jacques Regaldo, formally Operating
Senior VP of the Generation and
Engineering Division at EDF Group,
became Chairman
of the Board of
WANO on March 1,
2013. Mr. Regaldo
worked at EDF for
32 years and held
numerous positions,
including Senior VP
of the Employment
Division of EDF
Group, Executive
VP: Managing
Director of the Fossil and Hydroelectric
Generation Department of EDF SA,
Head of Human Resources of the
Generation and Engineering Division,
Site VP of Cruas-Meysse and Golfech
Nuclear Power Stations, Engineer in
the EDF Nuclear Generation Inspection
Team and Shift Technical Advisor (STA)
at St Laurent des Eaux Nuclear Power
Plant.
An interview by Newal Agnihotri,
Editor of Nuclear Plant Journal at the
International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) International Ministerial
Conference on Nuclear Power in the
21
st
Century in St. Petersburg, Russian
Federation on June 27, 2013.
1.
What are the highlights of Moscow
Biennial General Meeting (BGM) 2013?
In Shenzhen we created the Post-
Fukushima Commission. This Post-
Fukushima Commission was chaired
by Mr. Tom Mitchell of Ontario Power
Generation and proposed to the main
governing board the creation of 12
working groups to work and improve
WANO’s programmes in 12 directions.
Nine have action
plans
and
are
improving very fast.
We are now on the
way to implementing
all the improvements
we decided on in
Shenzhen. Some of
those are a little more
complicated.
For
example, we want
to introduce some
design aspects in our programmes but
this needs a little work. We decided that
we wanted to assess all the nuclear plants
and to introduce a kind of post-peer
review assessment process, such as exists
in the WANO Atlanta Centre, where this
is carried out in the North American
stations. This kind of process also exists
in some big companies such as EDF. The
idea is to build something common for all
nuclear power plants and all the member
companies. So this kind of working group
needs a little more time. We confirmed in
Moscow that we wanted to implement
all the decisions taken by the Post-
Fukushima Commission and put into
operational practice all the decisions of
the 12 working groups. We plan to make
all these changes inside WANO before
2015. In 2015 our BGM will be held in
Toronto, Canada.
2.
What is the scope of operation in the
working groups?
To use an example, one working
group relates to our peer review
programmes. We decided that the
frequency of the peer reviews should be
increased. Implementation of this action
will be possible within two years. In order
to do this, we need to hire more skilled and
experienced staff in our regional centres
and in the London office. Therefore, we
have planned to increase our internal
competencies from 200 staff members
now to 400 in 2015 in order, for example,
to carry out the increased number of peer
reviews. We have also decided that each
member would have one corporate peer
review every six years. We have already
created a branch of the London office in
Hong Kong, in order to enable us to carry
out a pre-startup review before each new
unit is commissioned. We also decided
to offer restart reviews to the Japanese
companies that have been in long
term shutdown. The Japanese nuclear
operators (JNOs) have accepted these
reviews and they are being undertaken
before any restarts occur. The JNOs will
soon know the new rules or regulations
that they have to follow.
3.
Is a WANO review a requirement for
the restart of the plants?
WANO voluntarily provided this
support to the JNOs to be sure that they
are as prepared as possible when or if the
decision is made to restart.
4.
Being an international organization,
how does WANO deal with large cultural,
political and language differences?
We deal with 34 or 35 different
countries and areas from four continents
and with very different cultural
backgrounds. First, of course, we have
our four regional centres. We have
multinational teams inside our WANO
London Office. In London we try to
have specialists from all the different
regions. So inside the London office we
have an intercultural team of ten different
nationalities. We have teams including
members from Spain, Canada, France,
the UK, Finland, Russia, the United
States, China and Japan. We strive to
have these intercultural ‘melting pots’,
I should say. We routinely communicate
in different languages on our member
website. When we publish reports, we
also provide training materials for all
16
NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2013
