CSNI Workshop

Better Nuclear Plant Maintenance: Improving Human and Organisational Performance

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 3-5 October 2005

Organised by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission & the UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate

The general objective of the workshop was to exchange and disseminate information about management of nuclear plant maintenance programs and measures to prevent or mitigate the effects of maintenance errors. International experience with methods to improve human performance during maintenance, opportunities for improvement, organisational support and new developments were discussed during the workshop. The principal aims are to share good practices amongst both regulators and licensees. Furthermore, the aim was to assist SEGHOF to understand what type of work is necessary in order to plan further international activities in this area.

It is expected that the results will aid participants to better understand the impact of human and organisational performance during maintenance and to plan, manage and implement maintenance activities more safely and effectively.

Human and organisational factors have been shown to make a significant contribution to nuclear plant incidents. Of particular concern is the impact of these factors on the planning, management and delivery of plant maintenance activities. Errors during maintenance may not always be revealed by commissioning tests and may remain undetected for extended periods until the affected system is called upon to function. For these reasons it is prudent to consider how best to defend against the incidence of maintenance errors or mitigate their effects.

Background

The CSNI Special Experts Group on Human and Organisational Factors (SEGHOF), is tasked to improve the current understanding of human and organisational performance and the way in which this impacts upon nuclear safety. A workshop to examine methods and approaches to ensure that maintenance is planned, managed and implemented effectively is intended to contribute towards furthering that understanding. The workshop will be of interest to nuclear utilities for the implementation of their maintenance programmes, and to regulatory bodies concerned about the potential impact of poorly planned or managed maintenance on safety. The focus of the workshop will be identifying practical and innovative approaches to maintenance activities. Securing effective and safe maintenance performance will be achieved through providing a forum which enables a wide-ranging exchange of experiences and approaches on a range of related topics.

Previous NEA work in the area of maintenance

Both the NEA Committee on Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) and the Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities (CNRA) and their various working groups have had several activities dealing with maintenance in the past. These activities approach the topic from different point of view than this workshop. However, the reports available about these activities form a good background material to the topic.

An example of currently ongoing activities in the field is the joint IAEA/NEA IRS Topical Study: “Maintenance issues, including quality assurance, human factors and procedures aspects”. The UK is the lead country for this study.

In the following, a list of CSNI and CNRA reports about maintenance is presented.

CSNI activities and reports in the field of support to human and organizational factors of maintenance:

NEA/CSNI-68 (1981)- A Guide to writing maintenance test and calibration procedures by a CSNI Group of Experts on Human Error Assessment. www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/1981/csni81-68.pdf

NEA/CSNI/R(1991)6 - International practices for analyzing, regulating and improving human performance of maintenance activities at nuclear power plants, 1991. Contact the NEA Secretariat for a copy.

NEA/CSNI/R(1994)17 - Management of maintenance outages and shutdowns: summary of reports, 1994. Contact the NEA Secretariat for a copy.

NEA/CSNI/R(1995)27 - Joint OECD/NEA-IAEA Symposium on Human Factors and Organisation in NPP maintenance outages: impact on safety. Stockholm , Sweden , 1995. www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/1995/csni-r95-27.pdf

Reliability data collection to support maintenance programmes (PWG5/WGRISK):

NEA/CSNI/R(1995)13 - Proceedings of the International Workshop on Reliability Data Collection in Support of PSA, Maintenance and Life-Assurance Programmes (1995 : Toronto , Canada ), 1996. Also referenced as: OCDE/GD(96)62. www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/1995/csni-r1995-13.pdf

NEA Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities (CNRA) - reports in the field of inspection of maintenance work (WGIP):

NEA/CNRA/R(1997)1 - Regulatory Inspection Practices related to Inspection Planning, Plant Maintenance and the Assessment of Safety- Proceedings of an International Workshop, (1996: Chester, UK), 1997. Also referenced as: OCDE/GD(97)62. www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/1997/cnra-r97-1.pdf

NEA/CNRA/R(2001)6 - Inspection of Maintenance on safety Systems During NPP Operation www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/2001/cnra-r2001-6.pdf

NEA/CNRA/R(2003)4 - CNRA - Nuclear Regulatory Inspection of Contracted Work Survey Results - Working Group on Inspection Practices www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/2003/cnra-r2003-4.pdf

 


Introduction
Programme

© 2005 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Last updated: Novembre 30, 2010


Introduction

Programme