REACTORS QUALITY ASSURANCE PROGRAMME

The objective of the project was to develop a complete and coherent Quality Assurance (QA) Program for operation of Russian NPPs in order to improve as quickly as possible the operating safety of these plants.

(General)
A complete quality assurance program for all the Russian NPPs has been developed. Taking into account the experience of Consortium member-countries (United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain) and international practice and applying the existing Russian QA guidance documents, the new QA documentation system does/did:

Represent a multi-level hierarchic system of documentation;
Establish staff responsibilities for various kinds of activities;
Identify quality categories and requirements to activities, spare parts, procured items and materials.
All documents were produced according to a unified format. The documents developed represent typical Management Procedures (MPs), which, in the course of their introduction, were and will be adapted to each NPP with account for plant-specific features. Novovoronezh NPP and Balakovo NPP were selected as reference plants under project. The project was the first stage in the development and introduction of the NPP Operational Quality Assurance Program at Russian nuclear plants.
Result (Detail)
The Russian specialists working on the project provided the basic regulatory documents (Codes & Standards) in the area of safety and quality valid in the nuclear industry to their Western partners for review. Besides, Western experts visited Novovoronezh NPP to collect information on the status of the quality system. During this visit the Western experts also made a presentation of their quality system and discussed the sequence of performing the work under the project with plant personnel.
In the course of the project a 6-week seminar of Russian specialists from Rosenergoatom, VNIIAES and Novovoronezh NPP at the British Utility Nuclear Electric was performed to get familiar with QA in Great Britain. During the first 2 weeks of this visit the Western experts delivered training to the Russian specialists on QA aspects. In the course of this training the Russian specialists had an opportunity to evaluate the existing Nuclear Electric’s quality system that was fully in line with the requirements of the IAEA quality documents (50-C-QA). They visited Sizewell B NPP (a PWR plant similar to Russian VVER plants) and got familiar with this plant’s quality system. The remaining 4 weeks were spent at Heysham-2 NPP where the Russian specialists also got familiar with the existing QA system and started the work to produce the documents foreseen by the project.
Based on the knowledge obtained, it was decided to improve the quality system existing at Russian NPPs. As a result, a three-level QA documentation system was adopted at Russian NPPs.