19.09.2019  THE INFORMATION AND PR DEPARTMENT OF THE BELOYARSK NPP

The WANO support mission at the Beloyarsk NPP has been completed

The experts of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) has paid a visit to the Beloyarsk NPP with a support mission on the following subject: ‘Staff activities at the workplace’.

The main goal of the mission is to facilitate exchange of ideas, experience and best practices with regard to staff operation improvements, solidifying the practice of using error prevention tools, and elaborating recommendations on how to use observations and mentorship.

The representatives of the Moscow Regional WANO Office were the mission participants. Among them are the head of the WANO MO group lead Evgeniy Kovalev and experts Dmitriy Dubov (the Leningrad NPP), Denis Malanin (the Kalinin NPP) and Dmitriy Chichikin (WANO MO). The plant’s top management officers represented the Beloyarsk NPP during the mission.

According to Evgeniy Kovalev, the process of observing the staff at their workplace is quite complicated and is similar to a walk-through in a way. ‘Actually, there is a huge difference between them. During a walk-through, we are focusing on how the equipment operates, while an observation focuses on the staff operations. The good thing about an observation is that it helps detect errors in the way people, technology or process organization malfunction’, Kovalev said.

Yury Nosov, the Beloyarsk NPP director ad interim, stressed how important the meeting was since, following the WANO partnership verification in 2016, an improvement area was recommended on the ‘Staff operation’ direction. ‘After the partnership verification, the Beloyarsk NPP has introduced a standard of observing the staff operations, which is now a part of the operational safety self-assessment process. As of now, these observations are only carried out by heads of departments, but next year we are planning to extend the list of observers for it to include supervising engineers, heads of laboratories and group heads’, Yury Nosov noted.

During the mission, the experts have carried out a number of interviews with the heads of the plant’s operational facilities and observed the way the staff of RC-2, TC-2, CTAI and EC work on the equipment during the scheduled activities; besides, they have reviewed the applicable documents on the methodology of observations and ad hoc briefings.

As a result of the mission, the experts have come up with their suggestions on improving the system of observing the Beloyarsk NPP staff operations, which summarizes the positive experience in this regard. 

The Beloyarsk NPP has come into operation in April 1964. The first power blocks of the Beloyarsk NPP with thermal reactors AMB-100 and AMB-200 has been closed after the accumulated running time. The power block with a fast industrial capacity reactor BN-600 is still on. The power block with a fact reactor BN-800Н is currently being prepared for coming into operation. 

The up-to-date information on the nuclear environment close to the Russian NOOs and other nuclear objects is available at www.russianatom.ru 


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