on Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection - Energie EDF

More documents

Recommendations

Info

THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S REPORT ON NUCLEAR SAFETY AND RADIATION PROTECTION of operating skills, the establishment of the schedule at planning level and the issuing of work permits. These resources, which are seconded from the operating teams for long periods, provide an effective connection with the maintenance departments. The scheduling is considered consensual and legitimate. SKILLS In this field, the maintenance departments appear to be in increasing difficulty. The staff are young, the training long and the departures on retirement are many. These factors combined mean human resources will be in short supply for some time to come. In addition, the maintenance departments are constantly being called to play parts in the numerous corporate projects in progress, which frequently results in re-organisation and changing of responsibilities. Wherever I go, maintenance staff are under pressure and becoming disorientated. The deployment of the AP 913 programme intended to increase the reliability of equipment has resulted in the arrival of a significant number of recently-qualified engineers in the plants. Meanwhile, I deplore the insufficient number of technical engineers in the maintenance departments where the technical mentors are still primarily the work package planners, who are ever few in numbers and have many calls on their time. The introduction of reliability departments has in some cases contributed to further distancing the maintenance methods staff from the field and weakening the fieldwork departments. I am not certain that the allocation of significant amounts of resources to the AP 913 programme, in view of the small amount of unplanned capacity loss, is the best way of addressing the current needs for unit outages and planning of the General Refurbishment. If I am sounding the alert about the need for technical engineers and not managers in the maintenance departments, it is because the planners have become a rare resource that is under pressure and subject to demands from all quarters. The position is not considered an enviable one by our workshop technicians, who would prefer quieter jobs for much the same money. As in the operating departments where young engineers have been introduced to the profession, the same needs to be done in the maintenance departments. I hail the re-launch of the maintenance engineer training that had been scaled back for a number of years and which now meets a real requirement. In the maintenance professions, training time is also long, with on-job exposure and the need for mentoring. The lack of supernumerary staff at all levels is still keenly felt, at a time when increasing numbers of staff are taking retirement. I am pleased to note the development of 42 MAINTENANCE, A STRATEGIC DOMAIN inter-organisational exchange programmes in the plants for both field workers and engineers. This can go some of the way to addressing the lack of professionals in the maintenance departments by combining apprenticeship in the field with mentoring and theoretical training. RIGOUR IN EVERYDAY WORK AND SURVEILLANCE Rigour and quality are hard to obtain when the workers are faced with numerous contingencies on an everyday basis, when they have to handle case files that are increasingly bulky and sometime lack the drawings, and when they need to handle issues outside their range of skills or original profession. The issue of “hands-on time”, which was covered at length in my previous report, remains unsolved and I regret not being able to see progress in the field. Increasingly faced with cases of sub-standard quality in the field, I note that surveillance is not properly playing its role as a line of defence. I have observed that the context is unfavourable: the rule sets are numerous and complicated, risk analysis is often late and too standardised, and the surveillance manager’s position is not held in high regard. Despite this, some plants are on the right track and making progress. I accordingly hail arrangements to promote the surveillance manager position by either an associate director or by the head of industrial relations. I strongly encourage such initiatives. Surveillance managers are still all too often appointed only a few weeks before unit outages, leaving them insufficient time to study the files and draw up their surveillance programmes. Their training remains too orientated towards an apprenticeship consisting of book learning rather than “by learning to see on the job”. Regarding this subject, I would like to recognise the creation of a department at Sizewell B dedicated to surveillance and ensuring both the surveillance of work and the accreditation of in-house checking by contractors. SPARE PARTS AND THE AMELIE SPARE PARTS MANAGEMENT CAMPAIGN This year, once again, during my encounters with maintenance staff, the subject of spare parts remains a complex one monopolising much time and energy, with one out of two parts not being procured by the standard process. It is proving lengthy for confidence to be restored between the multi-year organisations in the plants and the spare parts teams of the Central Technical Support Department (French acronym UTO). I think, however, that we are going in the right direction.
I met the staff of the AMELIE spare parts management campaign at the Central Technical Support Department facilities and at the Velaines spares storage platform. Launched in 2008, the AMELIE spare parts management campaign is now reaching its final stages and the permanent organisation in charge of spare parts in being turned over to the Central Technical Support Department. I consider it most important for the handover to take place in a proper manner without undue haste, with as much plant involvement as possible. The Central Technical Support Department and the plants need to make a point of working in close collaboration for the process to be permanent. With this project, EDF SA has devoted considerable financial efforts to rationalize the management of spare parts for the French nuclear power plants and I insist that theses must be maintained until the project is completed. The new stock management policy has been accompanied by a substantial increase in the stocks, the creation of the Velaines platform and the development of new management tools. The Velaines platform, which was commissioned in 2011, is the strategic centre of the system where all movements are centralised: acceptance, packing, storage and shipping for the 58 French nuclear units. After a commissioning period in 2012, it should be operating at full capacity to back up the outages in 2013. The numerous advantages of having all the spare parts for the plants in one place (except the heavy parts, which remain at Creil) must not lead to underestimating the associated risks. Failure of a conveyor belt, which I witnessed during my visit halfway through the year, is an illustration of this issue. Rationalisation of the corporate stocks also means managing the work on repair and re-conditioning parts. This management, which is just beginning, needs to rapidly come up to speed to close the loop. I note that stock management in the plants has become more complex, requiring far greater competence with the computerised tools for the storekeepers. The latter should have greater support during the changeover. While on the subject of spare parts, it is necessary to once again mention the issue of obsolescence. The component obsolescence project, begun a number of years ago, does not seem to have been allocated sufficient resources to cover all the issues, with the attendant risks. MAINTENANCE, A STRATEGIC DOMAIN The Velaines platform THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S REPORT ON NUCLEAR SAFETY AND RADIATION PROTECTION Set up as part of the AMELIE spare parts management campaign, it will house all the spare parts for the French plants except heavy components and standby stocks in the plants. It is on a 15-hectare site in the County of Meuse. The Nuclear Operations Division has asked the Industrial Support for Production Division (French acronym DAIP) to run this platform, via the corporate logistics office. Some seventy people are employed there. Key figures for the Velaines platform: • Warehouse surface area: 45,000 m2 • Number of spare parts: 4 million • Number of items listed: 200,000 • Length of shelving: 7 km • Number of storage/retrieval machine cells: 120,000 THE CONTRACTORS The Velaines corporate stores When it comes to work in the field, contractor staff are confronted with the same difficulties as our maintenance workers: long waits, tools not always available, frequent re-scheduling and numerous constraints in the work environment. Hands-on time is not increasing. All recognise that it is too short, and this needs to be taken in account when planning the General Refurbishment. For the employers, the problems with the renewal of skills and estimating the work load are the most intractable. The contractors working on the French plants have the same swings in activity as their client EDF. Better working conditions resulting from better planning, more flexible organisation and properly-proportioned resources will help to compensate for shortcomings on the part of the EDF and subcontractor staff, and thus improve nuclear safety in the plants. Our business policy in the field of maintenance, as I have seen during my visits to the plants and encounters with 43
Page 1: The Inspector General’s report on
Page 5: CONTENTS CONTENTS THE INSPECTOR GEN
Page 8 and 9: THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S REPORT ON
Page 41 and 42: MAINTENANCE, A STRATEGIC DOMAIN THE
Page 43: Despite this, the plants are contin
Page 47 and 48: NUCLEAR TECHNICAL INFORMATION SYSTE
Page 49 and 50: NUCLEAR TECHNICAL INFORMATION SYSTE
Page 51 and 52: ATTENTION TO CHEMISTRY NEEDED IN OP
Page 53 and 54: ATTENTION TO CHEMISTRY NEEDED IN OP
Page 55 and 56: A NEW IMPETUS FOR THE EPR-TYPE REAC
Page 61 and 62: PLANT LIFE EXTENSION IS CONDITIONED
Page 63 and 64: PLANT LIFE EXTENSION IS CONDITIONED
Page 65: MY RECOMMENDATIONS PLANT LIFE EXTEN
Page 96:
E.D.F. Présidence IGSN 21, avenue
show all

on Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection - Energie EDF

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?