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THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S REPORT ON NUCLEAR SAFETY AND RADIATION PROTECTION BLAYAIS NUCLEAR POWER PLANT: THE LEADER I visited Blayais Nuclear Power Plant where the staff showed how the project was progressing. I found that the managers and staff of the teams to all be very keen. Blayais was chosen as the first to deploy the SDIN in a plant once the documentation part (the only part available to date) went live in the first corporate departments, namely the Central Technical Support Department (French acronym UTO) and the Operations Engineering Unit (UNIE). The plant had the reputation of having well-ordered processes, a properly integrated multi-year maintenance policy and the rules for unit in service and unit outage situations. The deployment was initially planned for 2010, but actually began in the middle of 2011 and was extended to unit outages in 2012, including a ten-yearly outage. I appreciated the particularly strong involvement of the plant management, beginning with the director and extending through the line management, at a time when the plant was extremely busy. Proper allowance for nuclear safety by the plant I also noted the unflagging involvement of the independent nuclear safety organisation at the plant to promote the INSAG 18 initiative and to avoid compromising nuclear safety during deployment in the plant, which was not complete at the time of writing this report. Special attention has been paid at the plant to real-time nuclear safety and the control of state changes during unit outages and start-up. The professions find common ground on the basics The plant management took care to engage with both the service-users and service-providers. They were involved in training, planning and analysing the impact of the basic work elements, with managers putting themselves in the positions of the players. The plant management seized the opportunity to get all the professions to work together (operations, maintenance, chemistry, logistics, risk management etc.) on establishing the basics of the activities liable to be affected by the SDIN. This work has made it possible re-examine and update the basic work protocols: functional diagnosis to drawup a job or fieldwork request, planning of preventive and contingent activities, programming, scheduling and coordination of activities, making allowance for logistical 46 NUCLEAR TECHNICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM: STILL A LONG ROAD AHEAD constraints, drawing-up job permit requests, risk analysis, requalification, rectification of discrepancies, first-line and second-line analyses and experience feedback. In this context, the deployment has strengthened the position of the multi-year initiative in a manner consistent with the unit in service and unit outage initiatives. A major effort to cope with an underestimated workload I have discovered that an excessive number of adjustments had to be made which required much time and effort at the plant (still the case), indicating that the system was not properly finalised before deployment, and also that the workload was underestimated from the start, even though the plant had the reputation of being wellorganised with good work methods. There was clearly failure to foresee the amount of work required, at programme level and in the plant, for the professions and for the owners of the information system. Although the plant was busy with its routine work to generate power and cope with a ten-yearly outage at the same time as the system was deployed, it nonetheless rose to the challenge and set contingency plans in place without compromising everyday nuclear safety. This, however, required a major effort for the plant staff, particularly as the professionals needed were already busy with many other things, and here it is especially planning that I have in mind. Insufficient prior consideration of the nuclear safety implications by fleet level I have also noticed that it was necessary to make major corrections at a late stage, which could well compromise nuclear safety, for instance, operations requests to allow good planning of the agendas for the unit outage safety commission meetings before changing reactor modes during start-ups. I am surprised to see that the new tool allows more laxity and less clear traceability of the lines of defence at this stage than the existing SYGMA system. It has necessitated organisational arrangements that are more complex and stricter in order to prevent degrading nuclear safety in execution, as well as to maintain independence of technical checking, first and second line analysis, and verification work. The nuclear safety analysis was carried out as part of the Nuclear Technical Information System programme at the start using the INSAG 18 approach as a basis and inputs from a socio-organisational and human factors
NUCLEAR TECHNICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM: STILL A LONG ROAD AHEAD analysis but it was not initially sufficiently challenged by fleet level on these considerations. I am therefore raising the question as to the depth of the nuclear safety analysis of the programme as a whole, and suggest that it needs to be more adaptable and responsive as experience feedback on the programme accumulates. A tool that is not yet mature I also note that many more software rectifications are still awaited by the users in the new version which was due by the end of 2012 and which will need to be qualified at plant level. I regret that, pending the availability of the new version, the plant is obliged to work with an unfinished tool and draw attention to the risk of premature withdrawal of the SDIN Programme support to the pilot plant, a possibility that was mentioned during my visit. In the case at hand, that plant was able to rise to a high standard of work involving all the stake holders and closely involving both sides of the industry. On the face of it, the new information system appears to have been better accepted by the new generation of staff. It is to be hoped that, now the staff at Blayais Nuclear Power Plant have borne the brunt of the debugging, no more will be needed before further deployment. However I am left still wondering whether the conditions in the other plants are sufficiently robust for its successful deployment. KEY FACTORS FOR SUCCESS WITH FURTHER DEPLOYMENT Given the scale of the impact at Blayais Nuclear Power Plant, where a strong and stable situation prevailed, it appears to be vital that the backup of the programme by fleet level is sufficient for Blayais site (where final closeout of all the issues will be complex) and for the other plants. Blayais Nuclear Power Plant will soon be faced with steam generator replacement work, which is why the backup needs to continue until deployment is complete. This should be done with close involvement of the new set of plants concerned. Special attention will be needed for the plants with two nuclear units. Particular care will also be required for the professions most affected. Here I have in mind the planners in particular, who benefitted from relative stability during the deployment of the SDIN at Blayais Nuclear Power Plant. I am raising the alert as to the capacity of the plants to simultaneously cope with the renewal of skills, the passing-on of knowledge and skills to the incoming generation, the start of the General Refurbishment and THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S REPORT ON NUCLEAR SAFETY AND RADIATION PROTECTION the roll-out of the SDIN. The attention paid to the manner in which the change is managed must be particularly careful. The harmonious co-existence of the AP-913 project, the new activity model library, AMELIE spare parts management campaign and the SDIN must be durably guaranteed up to 2018. In this context the MME 2015 programme is playing a vital role that needs to be recognised in its action to orchestrate and set the timeframe for the key stages. I would like to draw attention to the resources required and the need to make sure that this programme is kept going. To manage the change, I consider that tracking nuclear safety and business performance indicators, to make sure there is no deterioration during the deployment phase, and the properly targeted return to steady-state conditions will help to ensure success. To avoid the players becoming discouraged with this lengthy deployment, it will be necessary to regularly set in perspective the performance results and the trends. I have also observed that questions are being raised about the deployment of the SDIN in the engineering centres. Allowance needs to be made in the SDIN for the particularities of the design rule sets and the modifications made by the Nuclear Engineering Department to find new synergy between engineering and operations. The staffing of the organisations for each of the standard nuclear reactor series, their responsiveness, and their connection to the engineering bodies in charge of establishing the rule set and with the plants for the integration of experience feedback will need to be the subject of special attention by the MME staff. Furthermore, I am left wondering about the depth of the standardisation or the work methods that the company will finally be able to achieve for each reactor series and for the plants as whole, as deployment at the pilot plant necessitated integrating many local particularities. 47
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