FNCA NUCLEAR SAFETY CULTURE PROJECT
SUMMARY OF THE 2006 WORKSHOP
19-21 SEPTEMBER 2006, BANGI, SELANGOR, MALAYSIA
The workshop was opened by Mr Kanesan Sinnakaruppan, who welcomed the participants and outlined the context for the workshop.
Mrs Cait Maloney, General Manager, Safety and Radiation Services of ANSTO replied, welcomed distinguished guests and delegates on behalf of ANSTO and reiterated the aims of the project. Mrs Maloney highlighted the actions from the previous workshop.
Mr Adnan Hj. Khalid, Senior Director (Corporate), MINT, gave the opening address and welcomed the delegates to the workshop. Mr Adnan expressed his appreciation of the peer review exercise and listed some of the initiatives being undertaken at MINT.
Mr Simon Bastin, Manager Systems Safety and Reliability of ANSTO and FNCA Project Leader for Nuclear Safety Culture replied and thanked the Malaysian hosts for their preparation.
Recent worldwide Safety Culture related activities and discussions within IAEA's Asian Nuclear Safety Network (ANSN)
Dr Tsutomu Yokoyama (JNES) reported on the already agreed activities within ANSN as follows:
- ANSN will be establishing a Topical Group on Safety Management of RRs (TGSM) including safety culture. The TGSM will be lead by Australia and Korea .
- The ANSN has noted FNCA's Nuclear Safety Culture project for Research Reactors and is interested in exploring mechanisms of cooperation with FNCA.
Mrs Maloney noted that she is now chairing ANSN and Dr Yokoyama is the Emeritus Chair so there is a good opportunity for cooperation in the area of safety culture.
Country Reports
Most countries attending the meeting presented updates to their Country reports. China presented an outline of the research reactors at the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology. It was apparent that significant progress to promote good safety culture is being made by all participants. Many countries are implementing or considering the implementation of key performance indicators in safety.
Both Australia and the Philippines indicated plans for decommissioning their reactors HIFAR and PRR-1 respectively. As discussed at the previous workshop, it is confirmed that several member organisations will be decommissioning reactors over the next decade.
At the same time Viet Nam outlined national visions for research reactors and nuclear power programs. Indonesia reported the regulatory activity in fostering nuclear safety culture and conducted the assessment to develop safety management system and safety performance indicators.
Peer review of Reactor TRIGA PUSPATI (RTP)
Mr Bastin gave a brief summary of the main aspects of the Peer review of RTP, under the headings of Good Practices and Issues and recommendations for improvement.
Mr Kanesan outlined the response to the Peer Review report, noting, for each recommendation, MINT's short term plan and long term plan to address the issues.
All the participants highly appreciated Malaysia 's positive and prompt response to the recommendations made in the Peer Review.
Report of Peer Review at the 7th FNCA Coordinators Meeting March 1-3, 2006 , Tokyo
Mr Atsuo Kohsaka gave a presentation that was made at the last FNCA coordinators meeting on the Peer Review status including an outline of the methodology and a summary of the number of good practices identified and recommendations made at each peer review, and the progress on each recommendation (as reported by members at the preceding workshop). It was agreed that this status report was useful because it concisely shows the number of recommendations and the number closed out. It was noted that the number of recommendations was not an indicator in itself, but the percentage of recommendations that are closed out is a good indicator of progress.
Outline of JANTI and its Peer Review process
Mr Jun Hamada (JANTI) gave an introduction to the new organisation called the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute (JANTI) which was formed in March 2005 by the members (now 114 companies engaged in the nuclear industry, including 33 Nuclear Safety Net member companies). JANTI has approximately 70 employees and is funded by its member contributions. One of the major features of JANTI is the Peer Review process, which is similar to the WANO and INPO peer reviews, but the results of the JANTI Peer Review are open to the media and the public. The JANTI peer review has specific rules for all activities including completion of the reports.
Technical Tour of the RTP
The workshop participants made a tour of the RTP Facility and discussed observations. The overwhelming observation was the significant progress on many of the Peer Review recommendations in just 5 months or so since the Peer Review mission took place. Although this tour was not intended to revisit the Peer Review, some very minor suggestions were transmitted informally to the Reactor Manager, Ms Zarina Masood.
Status report on progress on recommendations arising from past Peer Reviews
Mr Johnny Situmorang ( Indonesia ) reported that in the 15 months since the Peer Review of the Kartini Reactor Facility, of the 15 recommendations made, 6 have been completed, 2 are in progress or continuing, one is up for review, and the remainder will be addressed when practicable.
Dr In-Cheol Lim ( Korea ) reported that in the 2½ years since the Peer Review of the HANARO reactor facility, of the 32 details from 15 recommendations, 26 are completed or were already in place, 5 are in progress and one will be considered later.
Mr Pham Van Lam ( Viet Nam ) reported that since the 2003 Peer Review of the DNRR, of the 16 recommendations, only two now remain outstanding and these should be completed in 2007.
The Workshop participants thanked Viet Nam , Korea and Indonesia for their reports and expressed their appreciation for the progress that has been made and the commitment of their organisations to continue to act on the recommendations.
It was suggested that remaining actions for Viet Nam and Korea could be reported in their country reports, focussing only on those actions remaining outstanding since the previous workshop, and the status of those actions.
Topical Events ESafety Culture Implications of an event in the Radiopharmaceuticals Plant at ANSTO
Mr Bastin reported on a recent event in the Radiopharmaceuticals Plant at ANSTO in which a rupture of a pipe led to plant closure. He focussed on the safety culture implications of the event which included aspects such as:
- Failure to fully apply lessons learned from previous events of a similar nature;
- A production focus that at times took precedence over good safety principles;
- Inadequate routine maintenance;
- Lack of compliance with operating instructions; and
- Outdated operating procedures and facility safety case.
Performance Indicators
- Performance Indicators to evaluate nuclear safety culture in NPPs
Mr Satoshi Kurata (Chubu Electric Power Co) presented ten safety culture key elements developed by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and a consideration to develop performance indicators according to these elements. The ten elements are as follows:
- Commitment of the Top Management
- Clear Policy and Action by Senior Management
- Improvement and Establishment of QMS (Quality Management System)
- Reporting Culture
- Learning Organization
- Internal & External Communication
- Prevention of Decision Making Based on Wrong Judgment
- Compliance with Rules
- Accountability and Transparency
- Self Assessment or Third-party Audit
Each of these aspects was presented with the overall viewpoint, example questions to ask and example performance indicators. It was observed by the group that some of the elements and example questions were evolutions of the ASCOT guidelines which have formed the basis of good safety culture performance indicators.
- Implementation of the NISA Safety Culture Elements at Tsuruga-2 NPP
Mr Hiroyasu Ito of the Japan Atomic Power Company (JAPCO) reported on how JAPCO have implemented the ten elements of safety culture and produced a mapping of the actual Performance Indicators (PIs) used by JAPCO with the NISA elements. These PIs will be reassessed at each Periodic Safety Review (every ten years).
- Implementation of Safety Performance Indicators at ANSTO
Mr Simon Bastin presented the implementation of safety performance indicators at ANSTO, in fulfilment of the action from the last workshop (note that some countries presented this action as part of their country reports). Mr Bastin made the points that
- There is no one single indicator for safety, and concentrating on one indicator can distort priorities and indirectly encourage manipulationEof the data for that indicator.
- Using a wide range of indicators has advantages of covering all aspects of safety but must be balanced with the effort of collecting the data. .
- ASCOT and the more recent NISA elements offer a wide range of possible indicators.
- It is important to decide what is a reasonable subset of indicators that can be described as the EKey Performance IndicatorsE In doing so, we need to consider (a) EKey for whom?Eand (b) what role does the regulatory body have in setting or deciding that set of EKeyEindicators of safety.
- General Discussion on Key Performance Indicators for Safety
Mr Kurata made the point that continuous improvement is generally an expected part of business performance and so a static performance on safety KPIs would normally be considered a declineEin safety performance.
Dr Lim mentioned that KAERI is applying the Balanced Score Card system and some of the KPIs for the safety management of HANARO (in development) will become part of the BSC .
Future activities of the Safety Culture Project
- Workshop participants reviewed the FNCA workplan and agreed to meet next year using a peer review team early to mid 2007 calendar year followed by a workshop in late 2007 or early 2008.
- Workshop participants expressed the desire to have the next workshop and peer review in a country that has an operational research reactor which has not yet hosted a peer review. These countries are, in alphabetical order, Australia , China , Japan and Thailand .
- The group agreed to investigate the use of Safety Ke y Performance Indicators in their own country and to discuss at the next workshop. In preparation for that discussion, the participants agreed to consider the safety culture aspects of IAEA GS-R-3 and the related guides in advance of the next workshop, and the NISA elements presented by Mr Kurata.
- In the near future, opportunities will be sought to strengthen the ties between FNCA Safety Culture Project and the Asian Nuclear Safety Network - particularly in the area of webposting of information.
- The group agreed to continue (by e-mail) reviewing appropriate means for communication of FNCA-NSC activities.
- Dr In-Cheol Lim ( Korea ) proposed a revised format for the country report for next workshop. The ideas will be further detailed by Korea and the decision on the format will be made through communications between member countries within two months following the next peer review.
- The workshop participants agreed that the practice of holding the Peer Review with a followup workshop about 6 months later was a very effective one and agreed to continue that practice. It was recognised, however, that there were some drawbacks in terms of not including the group as a whole. Mr Bastin undertook to draft some guidelines on the Peer Review process.
Conclusions
- The FNCA Working Group on Safety Culture expressed its sincere thanks to the staff of MINT for their excellent arrangements, interesting program and obvious commitment to safety culture demonstrated for example by the improvements already made on the Peer Review recommendations.
- The Group confirmed that there is strong commitment to furthering nuclear safety culture in the region and that the workshop and peer review provide an excellent opportunity for participants to learn from each other.
- The Group agreed to recommend to the FNCA Coordinators' meeting that approaches be made to candidate countries to host the next Workshop and Peer Review. They further agreed that the timing of the events should be established between Mr Bastin and the FNCA Coordinators of candidate countries.
- The Group noted with regret that several of the Project Leaders are changing: Mr Ibrahim will be retiring soon and Dr Lim will be soon replaced by a new participant from Korea . The Group thanked them for their excellent contributions over the last few years and wished them success in their new roles.
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