On Site Assistance to South Ukraine NPP

This project is the continuation of TACIS OSA (On-Site Assistance) at South Ukraine NPP (see U1.02/97).
The TACIS nuclear programme is dedicated to the enhancement of the safety of NPPs in CIS (Commonwealth of Independent states) countries. The execution of this TACIS nuclear programme is based, among others, on the creation of close partnership between a NPP from the CIS and a nuclear Utility from EU (“On-Site-Assistance”).

The general objective of the project was to improve operational and design safety at South Ukraine NPP.
For that, it was requested to provide general on-site assistance in operation and maintenance activities containing:

• Overall coordination of the interfaces in the project,
• Permanent exchange of operational experience,
• Common identification and definition of issue topics,
• Improvement of safety culture,
• Training activities,
• Implementation of the following tasks:
• internal auditing of TACIS projects;
• software application for regulatory inspections of safety systems, with documenting and processing;
• experience exchange in maintenance procedures in containment, and training;
• elaboration of alarm sheets with South Ukraine NPP.

Carry out specific supply project U1.02/98A through assistance in:

• Preparation and revision of equipment technical specifications,
• Support in tendering process,
• Evaluations of the tenders during tender evaluations,
• Follow up of contracting, manufacturing, acceptance tests and delivery of equipment,
• Project follow-up, mainly for operational procedures package, training programme, documentation supply and commissioning activities.

Several meetings were held for progress monitoring of OSA at South Ukraine NPP, and for necessary induced decisions.
Punctual visits of South Ukraine NPP experts have been also organised at Spanish NPPs and at Spanish radwaste repository facility “el Cabril”.

Operational assistance (so called “soft OSA”):
4 topics have been worked in the frame of soft OSA:

Internal auditing of TACIS projects: this activity was aiming at:
Assessing QA in a number of TACIS projects in order to identify possible non-conformances and, if needed, to implement corrective and/or preventive measures.
Training South Ukraine NPP QA people, as a follow-up of activity, which has taken place in the frame of general OSA project U1.02/97.

Six internal audits were agreed in six South Ukraine NPP departments (QA, maintenance, radiological protection, chemistry, metrological, nuclear safety). Audit schedule has been defined in a meeting at South Ukraine NPP in February 2000. Along February and March 2000, DTN QA experts prepared the internal audits, with cooperation of South Ukraine NPP QA experts. Due to change of priorities from South Ukraine NPP, only a QA internal audit has been performed in April-May 2000 in the warehouses for maintenance. For replacing cancelled activity, a training course in QA in Kiev was organised in June-July 2001. Then, a visit to Spanish NPPs was organised with participation of South Ukraine NPP QA experts.

Software application for regulatory inspections of safety systems, with documenting and processing: it was agreed in November that this activity would focus on the study of documentation flow during an outage. As South Ukraine NPP wanted to replace this activity by supply of hardware and design of relevant software (which was not accepted in the frame of U1.02/98), and South Ukraine NPP staff was not available for a visit at a Spanish NPP, this activity was not performed.

Experience exchange in maintenance procedures in containment, and training: no visit to a Spanish NPP could take place, due to the unavailability of South Ukraine NPP relevant experts. Thus, this activity was not performed.

Elaboration of alarm sheets with South Ukraine NPP staff: this activity was linked with the acceptance by Ukrainian NRA of the format of the new operational and emergency procedures in the frame of TACIS project U1.02/96B “review of normal and operating procedures”. These new procedures were not ready when general OSA project U1.02/98 was completed in December 2002. Note that new procedures were in trial operation in April 2003. Thus, activity for new alarm sheets was still pending in December 2002.

Specific project (so called “hard OSA”): U1.02/98A “new boron concentration control monitoring and automatised chemistry control and diagnosis expert system”:
This project started officially in February 2000. It is a big TACIS supply project, so called PPP-PIP (Project Preliminary Phase – Project Implementation Phase). After contracting phase (DTN is the contractor for PPP), the first project meeting took place in November 2000 at South Ukraine NPP.

The project has been divided into three lots:

1. Implementation of an improved boron concentration monitoring system.
2. Implementation of an on-line chemistry monitoring diagnosis expert system for primary and secondary water.
3. Substitution of ammoniac by hydrogen gas dosing system for primary water.

A first version of TS (Technical Specification) was handed over in March 2001, with approval of South Ukraine NPP. Two other revisions and Evaluation Criteria have been developed before the end of the DTN service contract in December 2002. At the end of this service contract, TS-EC were still not approved by JRC yet.

Licensing plan was prepared jointly with DTN and South Ukraine NPP, taking into account “2+2 approach” (Western TSO RISKAUDIT supports Ukrainian NRA during the licensing process of this supply project).
DTN performed an assessment of requested budget for U1.02/98A, and preliminary budget estimation was issued in December 2002.
It was also decided that implementation phase of U1.02/98A would be managed through a dedicated organisation called PMU (Project Management Unit).

Comments

For soft OSA, many activities were cancelled, or their scope was reduced. According to DTN, this is mainly due to the lack of availability of South Ukraine NPP experts for these activities, and the fact that South Ukraine NPP wanted to re-orientate the scope of these activities during their progress.

Further information

Further information on the project results could be sought from Energoatom and South Ukraine NPP.

The Project Final report is available at the JRC-IE archive.