Feedback of operating experience

An effective programme for the review of operating experience should be established to provide methods to analyse both in-house events and events in the nuclear industry generally so as to identily plant specific actions needed to prevent the occurrence of similar events. In-honse events of interest to other plants should be shared with the industry to prevent the occnrrence of similar events. The effectiveness of the operating experience review programme should be assessed periodically to identify areas of weakness that require improvement. 

Similarly, the operating organization should obtain and evaluate information on operating experience at other plants that provides lessons for the operation of its own plant. To this end, the exchange of experience and its contribution to national and international organizations should be considered to be of paramount importance. 

All plant personnel should be encouraged to report aU events and near misses relevant to the safety of the plant. All plant personnel should be given the opportunity to report all events and near misses. It is the responsibility of plant management to review and respond to these submissions in a timely and confidential manner. 

Where applicable, lessons learned from industry and in-house experience should be transmitted to the training department as soon as possible for determination 

Data from operating experience should be collected and retained for use as input to residual life evaluation, probabilistic safety assessment and periodic safety review. 

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Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics approach (control of error by design, audit, and feedback of operational experience) Occupational/process safety Manual/control operations Routine operation Task analysis Job design Workplace design Interface design Physical environment evaluation Workload analysis Infrequent... 

The feedback of operating experience provides an important source of information for safety analyses during low power and shutdown conditions. 

Level 2, for the control of abnormal operation and the detection of failures, is to be reinforced (for example by more systematic use of limitation systems, independent from control systems), with feedback of operating experience, an improved human-machine interface and extended diagnostic systems. This covers instrumentation and control capabilities over the necessary ranges and the use of digital technology of proven reliability. 

Achieving good feedback of operating experience to the design team ... 

FIG. 71. Objective tree for Levels 1-4 of defence in depth (IRS, Incident Reporting System WANO, World Association of Nuclear Operators INFO, Institute of Nuclear Power Operations). Safety principle (299) feedback of operating experience. 

The programme for feedback of operational experience should also address the provisions for the evaluation of experience gained from operational events at similar plants, the identification of generic problems and the implementation of measures for improvement, if necessary. 

The design and construction shall be such that a source is suited for reliable, stable and easily manageable operation that ensures protection and safety with a high level of confidence. For this purpose, consideration shall be given to defence in depth, human factors, system testing and feedback of operational experience. 

Software faults are systematic faults caused by design errors and therefore do not have the random failure behaviour assumed in the analysis of hardware reliability. Consequently, different methods may be necessary to assess the unreliability introduced by hardware and by software. For example, the reliability of computer based systems may be demonstrated on the basis of a qualitative evaluation, with account taken of the complexity of the design, the quality of the verification, validation and testing of the development process over a wide range of input conditions, and the feedback of operating experience. 

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