The WANO team has completed its support mission on the topic of ‘Safety culture evaluation and improvement’ at the Beloyarsk NPP.

The goal of the visit was to exchange knowledge and experience and promote the Beloyarsk NPP team’s competencies based on the world’s best practices. ‘Any evaluation we received from the international experts help us grow and extend our expertise’, Ivan Sidorov, the Director of the Beloyarsk NPP, said.

Conrad Dubé, the experts’ team lead, expressed his gratitude to the Beloyarsk NPP management for the invitation issued to the support mission and noted: ‘Our team has already completed a similar mission at the Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company’s head office and almost all Russian NPPs, with the Beloyarsk NPP being one of the final ones. This is a wonderful initiative that shows you are transparent and strive towards improved operational efficiency. Your honesty, integrity and openness contributed a lot to the success of the support mission. We made a number of observations during the visit, held a few focus group interviews with the workers, the engineers, and the linear managers at the Beloyarsk NPP with regard to the safety culture. We reviewed the documents, too. We then analyzed all the data we have received and prepared a report defining the next step in the safety culture development’.

The team of experts encompassed the representatives of the WANO, the Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company and a number of other Russian and foreign organizations. One of those was the European Union Agency for Railways, which, although not a part of the nuclear power industry, also sticks to high safety standards.

During the visits to the 3rd and the 4th power blocks of the Beloyarsk NPP, the experts observed the way the operators of the reactor and the turbine halls worked and how they performed the routine switchovers. There were a number of focus group researches among the executants and the linear managers, interviews with the deputy chief engineers, heads of primary workshops and departments.

Summarizing the support mission, the team prepared a preliminary report, which will be elaborated further and finalized in a month. The recommendations from the experts will help the Beloyarsk NPP further advance its safety culture and, hence, facilitate reliable and secure equipment operation.

The initiative at the Beloyarsk NPP is a part of a large-scale assist visits program (one of the three formats for holding technical support missions) by the Moscow Office of the WANO dedicated to the safety culture, which will be deployed across all NPPs of the Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company in the next several years.