Performance of safety related activities

Safety related activities should be properly planned to ensure that they can be carried out safely and effectively. Suitable and sufficient assessments of the risks to health and safety arising from particular activities should be carried out. The nature of the required risk assessment will depend on the extent of the risks involved and may be qualitative or quantitative in nature. The purpose of the risk assessment is to identify the acceptability of the proposed activity and the appropriate contfol measures required to ensure that risks are as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA). The results of the risk assessment should be incorporated into work instructions or control documentation associated with the activity, for example, the documentation for the permit to work system. 

Appropriate arrangements should be in place to ensure that safety related activities are adequately controlled to minimize the risks to health and safety. The level of control should depend on the safety significance of the task. Activities with a high level of safety significance may require a specially authorized person to carry out the task, such as the reactor operator. In addition, certain critical activities such as tests and experiments will need to be authorized in advance and will involve the use of a permit to work system. Other control measures may include the use of hold points and verification stages during complex tasks and the control of stores items and test equipment. 

All safety related activities should be carried out in accordance with written procedures. These define how the activity can be carried out safely and, where appropriate, identify the steps to be taken in the event of an abnormal situation. The procedures should be issued and controlled in accordance with the organization s quality assurance programme. Further guidance on operating procedures can be found in Ref. [6]. 

Safety review procedures should be maintained by the operating organization to provide a continuing surveillance and audit of plant operational safety and to support the plant management in its overall safety responsibilities. 

However, it should be borne in mind that there is no one single indicator that provides a measure of the safety of a plant. A range of indicators should be considered in order to provide a general sense of the overall performance of a nuclear power plant and its trend over time [7]. 

---