Nuclear Technology

Safety Design, Requirements and Technical Support

The most severe accidents in nuclear power, the Three Miles Island event, the Chernobyl disaster, and the severe accident at Fukushima Daiichi had painful demonstrated the importance of the highest level of safety to prevent from accidents with harmful consequences, resulting from a loss of control over the reactor core. All of these and other minor events as well, had contributed to a steady improvement of reactor designs. Having experienced the design consequences of all 3 events up to the definition of latest PWR designs including EPR, Se-grauf had served and provide support in the development of national safety standards, in causal analyses, in the implementation of large backfitting measures and other nuclear safety related activities.

Event and Causal Analysis

Events will happen, of that there is no doubt. However, we can learn from them. A thorough Causal Analysis will help to identify open and latent weaknesses in technology, in processes, in competence, in culture or other contributors.

There are many tools for the support of causal analysis but for all: the key is to ask the right questions and to consider all potential aspects: Technology, Processes, Human Performance and Culture. Subsequent “Corrective Action Programmes” (CAP) enable the elimination of latent weaknesses. Often Regulators require a Causal Analysis Report and related Corrective Action program to permit the restart of a nuclear facility after an event. We can provide assistance to Operators and/or to Regulators and we can provide an interdisciplinary team for complex events.

Outage Management our Speciality

Benefit from our experience and reduce your outage and refueling duration. Outage time reduction is cost effective due to increased availability and maintenance cost reduction. However, “more efficiency” should never have a negative impact on plant safety!

We analyze outage processes, outage organization, outage preparation and execution. Based on this, we define the potential for improvements and can assist in their implementation. Often small plant modifications can have a big impact to outage time reduction without any negative impact on plant safety.

We have conducted many outage benchmarks and on site reviews so we know what’s achievable. Make use of our outage management know how!

“Careful planning is the key to smooth-run outages at Neckar-2”

– Grauf, US Nuclear News Visit October 1997