Knowledge Management in Nuclear Liabilities Regulation in the UK - 18155
- Office for Nuclear Regulation, St. James House, St. James Square, Cheltenham, Glos GL50 3PR (United Kingdom)
Within the UK's nuclear safety regulator (Office for Nuclear Regulation; ONR) nuclear liabilities regulation addresses the safe management of radioactive waste, decommissioning and land quality through a facility's lifetime. Higher activity radioactive waste (HAW) could be stored on site for up to 150 years prior to disposal, Magnox decommissioning sites are planned to be in Care and Maintenance for up to 70 years and Sellafield decommissioning is not planned to be complete until after 2100. The long timescales over which decommissioning occurs and radioactive waste is managed is a challenge to maintaining a suitable level of knowledge to effectively and efficiently regulate nuclear liabilities activities. There is a danger that implicit knowledge accumulated over decades could be lost as people retire. Effective knowledge capture and transfer are key elements in maintaining a workforce with the capacity and capability to deliver high levels of nuclear safety, given the demographics of the UK nuclear industry. Maintenance of recorded information over long timescales with changing technologies is necessary to allow safe storage and disposal of waste and intelligent response to incidents. As the safety regulator, ONR's ability to influence improvement in nuclear safety relies on our inspectors having access to high quality knowledge. The ONR Strategy 2016-2020 [1,2] commits to continue to recruit, retain and develop staff so that we have a core workforce with the capacity and capability to deliver high quality, enabling nuclear regulation. Over the next 30 years, the UK plans to develop a geological disposal facility and UK EDF power stations will transition into decommissioning. The ONR Knowledge Management Strategy sets out the activities planned to maintain specialist knowledge to support staff development and build organisational resilience. Guidance on waste management is given in 'The management of higher activity radioactive waste on nuclear licensed sites' (referred to as the Joint Guidance [3]) published by ONR and the UK environmental regulators. It includes our expectations for managing information and records relating to radioactive waste, and introduces the concept of Radioactive Waste Management Cases (RWMCs). Our expectation is that knowledge and records must both be managed and transferred in such a way that future licensees are properly equipped to ensure that waste continues to be managed in a manner that prevents or minimises hazards to human health and the environment. RWMCs are an effective vehicle for demonstrating how the key elements of long-term safety and environmental performance will be delivered over the life cycle of the waste. They give a history of how the waste has been managed, capturing information and change over time. This paper will look at the challenges to managing knowledge in the UK nuclear industry, focusing on the safe management of radioactive waste, decommissioning and land quality. It will look at the problems faced by both licensees and ONR, drawing out common challenges. The paper will outline the approach taken within ONR to capture and communicate waste management and decommissioning knowledge and experience. Finally, it will look at how ONR regulates and influences how knowledge and records are dealt with in the industry to ensure safe nuclear liabilities management in the long term. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22975340
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US--20-WM-18155
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION
COMMUNICATIONS
DECOMMISSIONING
INFORMATION DISSEMINATION
KNOWLEDGE PRESERVATION
MAGNOX
NUCLEAR LIABILITY
RADIATION PROTECTION
RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
RECOMMENDATIONS
REGULATIONS
TRAINING
UNDERGROUND DISPOSAL
UNITED KINGDOM