9 Mar (NucNet): The most important lesson to be learned from the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi in Japan is that the nuclear industry must place greater emphasis on accident mitigation in addition to accident prevention, the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) has said.
Mr Felgate said: “We must be better able to cope with extremely low probability but high consequence occurrences. Severe accident management is a key to this challenge.”
In response to a question about how WANO had strengthened its activities in response to the accident, Mr Felgate said it had acted “swiftly and decisively” in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima-Daiichi.
He said a post-Fukushima commission was established in April 2011 and was charged with determining the changes WANO should implement to help prevent or mitigate a similar occurrence in the future, and “to close the gaps in WANO performance”.
The commission met four times and a delegation met with Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) management in Japan. Tepco is Fukushima-Daiichi’s operator.
The commission put forward five recommendations for discussion by the WANO governing board in advance of WANO’s 11th biennial general meeting in China in October 2011.
The recommendations were approved by the board ahead of the China meeting and included expanding the scope of WANO’s activities and developing “a worldwide integrated event response strategy”.
Other recommendations include changes to WANO’s peer review process, improving the association’s visibility and improving the consistency of WANO activities among its four regional centres in Atlanta, Paris, Tokyo and Moscow.
Mr Felgate said WANO members at the China meeting unanimously endorsed the new commitments to nuclear safety.
Since the China meeting, 12 projects and eight project teams have been formed to address the specific areas of WANO’s activities covered by the recommendations.
Mr Felgate said: “The project teams’ work is under way and WANO will report back regularly to its members on the progress of each project team throughout 2012.”
On the prospect of closer cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mr Felgate said a memorandum of understanding between WANO and the IAEA is being redrafted to include “further areas of cooperation”.
WANO has been working closely with the IAEA for a number of years and the MoU was put in place in 1999.
“However, in the light of the events of March 2011 and the changes already under way in the nuclear industry, WANO and the IAEA are amending the existing MoU to better reflect the two organisations’ changing priorities,” Mr Felgate said.
“We are also hoping to better coordinate peer reviews and OSART (operational safety review team) missions and will be increasing our participation in relevant meetings, conferences and seminars on nuclear safety.”
The IAEA’s director-general, Yukiya Amano, attended the WANO 2011 biennial general meeting in China and gave a keynote speech in which he also called for greater cooperation between the IAEA and WANO.
On 12 December 2011, Mr Felgate and WANO chairman Laurent Stricker met key leaders within the IAEA to work on details of what form increased cooperation might take. The revised MoU will be the result of those discussions, Mr Felgate said.
Since Fukushima-Daiichi ,WANO has set about improving its services to members by adding to its operating experience central team staff in London. It has appointed a programme director for operating experience and is doing more analysis work.
Mr Felgate said: “We are not where we need to be – the Fukushima accident has delayed our work slightly, but we are making headway.”
Another “huge area” for WANO is managing the large number of prestart-up reviews for new nuclear plants being constructed around the world.
Mr Felgate said that to manage this work, the association is planning to establish a prestart-up peer review team office based in Asia – where many of the 60 new units under construction are being built – in order to place resources where they are most needed.
WANO has appointed a prestart-up review team leader who will head this office when it is established in the fourth quarter of 2012.
The anticipated workload of this office will increase dramatically in 2013 with more than 10 prestart-up reviews planned for 2013, Mr Felgate said.
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