on Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection - Energie EDF

THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S REPORT
ON NUCLEAR SAFETY AND RADIATION PROTECTION
they have now put this behind them. The professionalism
of the staff has continued to grow, and secondments to
other plants as well as to the worksite or the engineering
force have successfully taken place.
I approve the choice given to each staff member, in
a meeting with their superiors, to determine their
own career path and to decide whether to stay at the
worksite or work elsewhere, in the power plants. In my
opinion, this has greatly contributed to overcoming the
disheartenment at the beginning of the year and has
completely cleared the air. In addition, it has made it
possible to establish a solid system of forward planning of
employment up to the time of commissioning. However,
the four-year extension of the site work does not help
with the operators taking ownership of the facilities, or
with the site management organisation, which over time
has become too bureaucratic and administrative. I deeply
regret that the operating staff are still stationed on the
cliff top away from the worksite and the installations, and
cannot easily go onto site to follow the erection work
and familiarise themselves with their future installations.
The explanations that I was given by the staff of the two
organisations do not seem to be very convincing.
Concerning this point, I consider that the probable
delay of one year in moving all the staff to the
future operations building alongside the nuclear unit
installations does not encourage the operators to feel that
the build-up to commissioning is under way. Even though
the operations teams have been re-organised to optimise
the transfers of equipment, few systems have actually
been transferred and I am left wondering about the ability
of the transfer process to cope with the future workload,
with the time available rapidly diminishing.
This year, during my visits to simulator facilities at the
CNEN, the Operations Engineering Training Unit and
the Research and Development Division, I noted the
substantial amount of work devoted to determining
the composition and organisation of the EPR control
room operations teams. In designing the man-machine
interface of the EPR control room, the concept was to run
the unit by just one active operator and one supervisor.
The first tests took place in 2009, but as a result of the
degree of progress with the design work, certain scenarios
were not yet playable by the operations staff. Meanwhile,
other EPR operators (TVO and TNPJVC) have opted for
a more conventional system with two active operators
and one supervisor. After a number of tests this year, EDF
should be in a position to choose the form of organisation
and submit it to the nuclear safety authority. In view of
the consequences of this choice for the future operator,
this matter appears to be a particularly urgent one.
56
A NEW IMPETUS FOR THE EPR-TYPE REACTORS
MY VISIT TO TVO AT THE OLKILUOTO SITE
TVO is a Finnish public limited company operating two
boiling water reactors commissioned in 1978, of which
the power ratings have been upgraded to 860 MWe.
The company has some 850 staff, with 500 handling
operations. For many years, TVO’s operating results
have been among the best worldwide. Despite its size,
it possesses wide experience. Its maintenance policy is
based on the swap-out of complete equipment items,
hence enabling outages to be kept short and has proved
its worth.
The construction, erection and commissioning of a
new EPR nuclear unit (OL 3) is taking place as a turnkey
operation by the vendor AREVA. With less than two years
to go before commissioning, the company is only now
beginning its recruitment of the future operating staff.
The approach, which is very different to our own, explains
the low-volume of exchanges between EDF and TVO staff
about EPR matters: their staff have not been available.
Today, I note with satisfaction that exchanges of views and
sharing of experience are beginning and the operators are
also cooperating. This year, TVO has joined the EPR Family
and is actively participating in the various working groups.
AREVA alone bears responsibility for the construction site.
All the project teams and the decision-making bodies are
stationed on-site, and the AREVA France teams only act
to provide support on a case-by-case basis. I am glad to
see that the exchanges between AREVA’s OL3 worksite
staff and the staff of the Flamanville 3 site management
organisation and the EDF CNEN are well-established,
frank and apparently useful. It is to be remembered that
OL3, the first EPR in the family, is specially instrumented to
supply a set of readings specified at the design stage for
the other reactors of the same type.
THE EPR PROJECT IN THE UK
The EPR construction site at Olkiluoto
The relations between the EDF Energy Nuclear New
Build (NNB) staff and that of the Nuclear Engineering
Division in France seemed to have been strained last year
but have now greatly improved. The successive stages