Ensayo Energía Nuclear Liderazgo.

Leadership for Safe Nuclear Power Industry

Topic 5

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Daniel Ramos Vilardell

2017

"Describe and put priorities on max ten actions (and their objectives) that you would take if appointed CEO of a nuclear power plant that has been shut down after a serious incident pointing to significant maintenance backlogs and deficiencies in plant configuration control. Also describe how you would follow up that your actions have resulted in an improved technical status of the plant and a permanent change in safety awareness and safety culture. What interactions would be needed with regulator and corporate functions? “

Contents

1. Introduction.

1. Modifications in the Plant Configuration Control.
2. Change in the company core values (vision).
3. Changes in the Safety Review Board Department of the Nuclear Power Plant.
4. New way to solve the way the solve the problems and challenges.

1. Implementing new ways to care for our employees, improving the working environment within the Nuclear Power Plant.
2. Implementing a Crisis Management Task Force to avoid workers from taking decisions under pressure and dangerous situations.

1. Summary of Actions taken
2. Conclusions

Introduction

        The Nuclear Business is a very complex industry where you must care for more things than the effectiveness and production of your power plant. You also should care about your environment, the people that works in your plants and the people who lives in areas nearby the Nuclear Power Plant.  If you want to take care of those factors you must assure a healthy environment in your power plant; you must ensure and promote a safety culture and safety awareness; as an appointed CEO, you must manage to care about all the technical aspects and procedures of the power plant but also you must be aware of the human related factors.[pic 2]

         If the Nuclear Power Plant has been shut down due to maintenance backlogs and deficiencies; we should totally redefine the technical aspects of our configuration control but also we should care avoiding human factor based errors. Additionally, It’s of critical importance to restore and preserve the trust of the regulators and stakeholders with regards to the power plant safety.

        As a newly appointed CEO if I want to restart the plant activities many changes have to be made; those changes are not only going to be of technical nature. The whole plant has to change, we have to change the safety culture of the workers and management, we have to change what we communicate to the regulator and operator; we have to change the way we work and our engineering mindset in order to ensure a safe power plant. Also, if you were appointed a CEO of a company you will have to write down the values and the vision that you want for the company making sure that are cascade down through all levels within the organization.

        First of all, as we know what failed within the plant configuration control is that the bad design of the configuration control made us believe that the valve was closed when it really was open. [TMV] In order to the plant to work we must fix the plant configuration control.

1. Modifications in the Plant Configuration Control.

Our plant configuration control had the problem that the indicators gave the wrong information to our workers, to fix it we should change all the configuration control and modernise it. Since there have been many technological improvements from the time when the plant started its activities, to avoid an accident like the one that happened we should have two ways to display the information a visual one and a digital one.

Also, to follow up that action and check if the plant configuration control is giving us the right information we should do maintenance checks in within all the plants to check if they are giving us the right information and give that information to the plant regulator.

The plant regulator will be given the task of ask for the information to check if the plant configuration control is working properly. He would be the one in charge of be assuring that the plant configuration control works properly every time. All the maintenance functions should be done when the regulator asks for. All the information collected by the regulator should be immediately communicated to the CEO and the stakeholders so they know how the plant is going.

It will improve the safety awareness and safety culture by acquiring the habit of checking the configuration control and their measures as a habit to check if everything is okay. There will also be zero tolerance when it comes to maintenance backlogs, so every maintenance and check should be done on time. The constant maintenance and the check of the configuration control will make sure that the plant is in an optimal technical condition.

In the beginning of the nuclear program there was a strong belief that nuclear safety could be ensured through a proper design of a nuclear power plant, i.e. a strong focus on the technical aspects of safety.  The accident at Three Miles Island in 1979 opened up to the influence of human behaviour and particularly the importance of the human-machine interface.  [CB] Having done the technical modifications of the power plant and those being followed up by the regulator; now the plant can work in a technical way, but our Nuclear Power Plant is going to work in a different way that it was before. We should change the human-factor related status of our Nuclear Power Plant.

1. Change in the company core values (vision)

You are a newly appointed CEO, so to be the leader of your Nuclear Power Plant you must project to the company WHAT DO YOU WANT (mission and vision of the Nuclear Power Plant) as a leader for the company and the values that you need to build it, for example we need to communicate to all of our employees that our mainly challenge for the company is not being the most productive power plant, is ensure a safe environment for all of the workers and the people living in the nearby areas. As leaders of a Nuclear Power Plant we should be clear and clarify to everybody that safety culture and awareness is way more important than some aspects of the national culture.

We need to communicate that vision or goal that we have as CEO’s and all the people working within the company should be clear of what are the goals of this company; to ensure and promote a safe environment and safety awareness. The identity of the company and the willingness to promote the company core values should be in every employee of the Power Plants.

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    Figure 1: How the values are in a company [EC]

It is necessary for us as CEO’s to understand that the role of a Leader is very important when it comes to promoting the company inner values and that we must inculcate them in every employee of our Nuclear Power Plant and in our managing department. We have to be sure that the safety culture and safety awareness is deeply rooted in all of our workers so they could work in order to fulfil the missions and vision of our Nuclear Power Plant.

To follow up this values and actions we would install a KPI (key performance indicators) system that are going to be checked by some of the corporate functions (specifically the Human Resources department) and our best employees will get rewards for their work within the company core values.

A Key Performance Indicator is a type of performance measurement that evaluates the success of an organization in a particular aspect, the KPI is going to be used in our Nuclear Power Plant in order that the employees are going to raise their KPI every time that they work for the company inner values that are promoting a safe environment for all of us. [KP]

To follow up this there will be hold monthly meetings of the Human Resources Department of the company with the employees with the lowest KPI to promote and teach the company vision. Our goal is that every employee of the company identifies himself with the company and our safety politics. A CEO is a leader and if you want to be a good leader the people that follow you should be convinced that you are doing the best thing that you can for your people and in this case for your company also. The employees working so hard for the safety will improve the technical status of our plant slowly and will improve also our safety levels.

This would improve safety awareness and safety culture since our workers will work towards our mission and vision that are protecting this values. They will work in safety matters to win points in the Key Performance Indicator in order to obtain rewards and therefore, they will be improving continuously in this areas and we our Nuclear Power Plant is going to become the best plant in our safety because our workers are going to work for safety and production instead of focusing in production and effectiveness, the mistake of focusing in production and effectiveness in the Nuclear Business could lead to major disasters involving the environment and the people related to the Nuclear Power Plant.

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