MASTER PLAN PROJECTS PLANNING

The G7 summit in July 1992 underlined the need and agreed on a broad programme of short-term and long-term measures to improve the safety of civil nuclear installations in operation and under construction in Eastern Europe and the CIS.
EC-funded activities (TACIS, PHARE and various other cooperation programmes) formed a significant part of the overall G7 framework. They were aimed at achieving tangible improvements in civil nuclear safety in the region within a five-year timescale. EC funding was subject to the agreement of recipient countries on mutually acceptable targets for safety improvement.
As one of the major donors, the EC initiated the formulation of the Master Plan in order to ensure the efficient use of the available resources by the development of a consistent approach to all its actions, the avoidance of duplication of effort and complimentarity of its actions with those of other donors. The EC regarded it as essential that the recipient countries were actively involved in the formulation and updating of the Master Plan. Indeed, it was regarded as imperative that the organisation of the actions was well-connected with the individual domestic programmes of each recipient country. The identification with recipient countries of their specific requirements for assistance and of well-defined milestones for decisions on the funding of future actions was a fundamental feature of the Master Plan.

The purpose of the Master Plan was to define, in a consistent pluriannual approach, all the actions to be undertaken on the various types of nuclear facilities of ex-Soviet design, regardless of the country concerned, and whether the funding was of EC origin or otherwise.
The idea was to define the safety modernisation measures required at each type of reactor and to monitor the implementation of the modernisation measures implemented at each NPP, regardless of the source of funding (i.e. NPP Operator’s own funds, TACIS or other international donors), thereby maintaining an inventory of the modernisation measures required.
The IAEA ‘Safety Issues’ books, the so-called green books, were a principal information source for setting up the Master Plan.
The projects were split into 13 groups, corresponding to IAEA classification, namely:

integrity of the primary circuit
I&C
accident analysis
training
seismic stability
fire protection
confinement/containment
maintenance
system analysis
waste and fuel cycle
emergency planning
RBMK
licensing activities
The purpose was then to make use of the Master Plan for the planning, definition and preparation of the TACIS Annual Programmes, selecting the specific actions to be performed under the annual budgets of the EC.
The EC contracted the TPEG (Twinning Programme Engineering Group), a consortium of the Community operators, to develop and maintain the Master Plan, starting with contract 22114.
The present contract was operated in parallel with contract 22114 with the objectives of:

Integrating the design and on-site industrial projects already underway from the TACIS or PHARE 91-92 programmes in a consistent planning (bar chart) for each type of reactor.
Indicate the milestones for required information meetings, seminars or decision making steps.
Indicate connections with recipient country domestic programmes.
Propose a planning for the required fuel cycle and radioactive waste management projects.
Propose a monitoring document that can be periodically updated in order to monitor the progress of the programme implementation.

The contract became effective on 26th November 1993 and ended on 26th March 1994.
During this 4 month period, the Consultant worked on the preparation of the planning and monitoring documents for VVER-440/230, VVER-440/213, VVER-1000, RBMK and BN reactors, as well as for the required fuel cycle and waste management. The activities were complementary to those of contract 22114.