In the event of a nuclear emergency the time available for decision making and for implementing an effective strategy for response may be short. It is therefore important that an appropriate management system be used. All organizations that may be involved in the response to a nuclear or radio­logical emergency shall ensure that appropriate management arrangements are adopted to meet the timescales for response throughout the emergency. Where appropriate, the management system shall be consistent with that used by other response organizations in order to ensure a timely, effective and coordinated response.

Although its probability is extremely low, the possibility that a large-scale nuclear accident has adverse health, social, economic, political and transna­tional consequences implies that national authorities have a key role in the development and implementation of nuclear emergency plans. Jurisdictions of the various orders and levels of government may be laid out in substan­tially different ways between States. Likewise, the authorities of the various organizations that could be involved in emergency response may be allo­cated in substantially different ways. A generic approach to describe the allocation of responsibilities at national level can be gotten from interna­tional recommendations. The national legislation allocates clearly the responsibilities establishing or identifying an existing governmental body or organization to act as a national coordinating authority. This authority is in charge of ensuring that responsibilities of operators and response organi­zations are clearly assigned and are understood by all response organiza­tions, and that arrangements are in place for achieving and enforcing compliance with the requirements.

The plant operator, the employer, the regulatory body and appropriate branches of government are responsible for establishing arrangements for preparedness and response for a nuclear or radiation emergency at the scene, at local, regional and national levels and, where so agreed between States, at the international level. In practice, all levels of national, regional and local public authorities have some responsibility in preparedness and response to nuclear emergencies. Responsibilities assumed by each author­ity depend on national political and administrative organization. Notwithstanding, sharing of responsibility is usually established according to a common pattern.

12.1.1 Responsibilities of the licensee

Primary responsibility in responding to a nuclear emergency falls on the operator and deals with implementation of provisions of on-site emergency plans under the oversight of the regulatory authority, as part of the require­ments established in the nuclear safety regulations. In discharging this responsibility, the operator has the following functions:

• Designing, building and operating nuclear plant in such a way that the probability of a breakdown, an accident or a malicious act that could trigger an emergency is minimized

• Developing on-site emergency plans appropriate for its facility and site, providing them with the necessary resources, and keeping them fully operational

• Providing to its staff special training on crisis management and opera­tion of the plant under emergency conditions

• Conducting periodic emergency exercises and drills to train its staff and to check the full operability of its on-site emergency plan

• Having suitable procedures and resources to bring the plant to safe conditions in the shortest time possible, and to implement them as soon as possible to minimize the health risks to its own staff and the uncon­trolled release of radioactive material abroad, in case of an emergency situation

• Cooperating with authorities in the preparation of emergency response by providing the means, resources and information necessary to draw up plans for protecting the population

• Notifying urgently to authorities in charge of protecting the population, the occurrence of any situation that requires the activation of contin­gency plans designed to protect people and keep them informed of developments, providing all available information that can be useful to take decisions and optimizing the use of the resources available to emergency plans. In many countries, licensees are responsible for taking first-response decisions until public authorities have been activated and are ready to assume the direction of the emergency response.

Milestone 1

As reflected by the IAEA, no safeguards system, no matter how extensive the measures put in place, can provide absolute assurance that there has been no diversion of nuclear materials or that there are no undeclared nuclear material or activities in a State. The safeguards system for imple­menting comprehensive safeguards agreements, including additional proto­cols, is designed to provide for verification by the IAEA of the correctness and completeness of States’ declarations, so that there is credible assurance of both the non-diversion of declared nuclear material from peaceful activi­ties and the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities.

Further to a State’s undertakings, Article III of the NPT also stipulates specific obligations of each State party to the NPT ‘not to provide: (a) source or special fissionable material, or (b) equipment or material espe­cially designed or prepared for the processing, use or production of special fissionable material, to any non-nuclear-weapon State for peaceful pur­poses, unless the source or special fissionable material shall be subject to the safeguards required by this article.’ After the entry into force of the NPT, multilateral consultations on nuclear export controls led to the estab­lishment of two separate forums for dealing with nuclear exports: the

Zangger Committee in 1971 and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in 1975.[70]

The Zangger Committee[71] was set up to consider procedures for exports of nuclear material and equipment related to NPT commitments. In August 1974, the committee produced a trigger list of items which would require the application of IAEA safeguards and, if the items were to be exported directly or indirectly to a NNWS which was not party to the NPT, the appli­cation of export procedures by the supplier. The trigger list and associated guidelines were communicated to and published by the IAEA as INFCIRC/209 (IAEA, 1974), which has been updated several times.

The Nuclear Suppliers Group, also known as the London Group or London Suppliers Group, was set up in 1974 after India exploded its first nuclear device, and included both non-members and members of the Zangger Committee. An authoritative document on the history, role and activities of the NSG has been published by the IAEA as INFCIRC/539 as amended (IAEA, 1997c, 2000, 2003, 2005c, 2009). The group sought to ensure that transfers of nuclear material or equipment would not be diverted to unsafeguarded nuclear fuel cycle or nuclear explosive activities. Therefore, among the other conditions of supply in the NSG guidelines, formal govern­ment assurances to this effect were required from recipients. The guidelines were originally communicated to the IAEA in 1978 and published as INFCIRC/254 (IAEA, 1978); the guidelines have been periodically amended, including the addition of Part 1 (IAEA 1992a) and Part 2 (IAEA, 1992b).

Milestones 2 and 3

In a practical sense, the NSG guidelines (INFCIRC/254, Parts 1 and 2) are essentially a set of export rules which govern the export of items and tech­nologies especially designed or prepared for nuclear use (Part 1) and the export of nuclear-related dual-use items and technologies (Part 2).[72] Whereas States party to the NPT have already forsworn the acquisition of nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices, and agreed to accept comprehensive safeguards on the entirety of their nuclear fuel cycle, States not signatory to the NPT will need to consider the nuclear suppliers’ requirements for export of sensitive facilities, equipment, material and tech­nologies used for peaceful nuclear purposes, prior to deciding whether to construct a nuclear facility.

To control the non-proliferation of nuclear material and technologies, the international community has focused on both States and non-State actors. Some requirements and measures extend beyond nuclear non-proliferation to non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and are included in several legally binding instruments by the UN Security Council (UNSC). Of primary importance is United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 (UNSCR 1540),[73] adopted in April 2004. UNSCR 1540 (2004) requires that all States adopt and enforce appropriate laws that prohibit any non-State actor to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons (otherwise known as weapons of mass destruction or WMD) and their means of delivery. Among its provi­sions is the call upon all States to fulfil their commitment to multilateral cooperation, including those within the framework of the IAEA.

A ‘newcomer’ will inevitably benefit from understanding the scope of UNSCR 1540 (2004)[74] and related resolutions (e. g., UNSCR 1673 (2006) and UNSCR 1810 (2008))[75] regarding their implications at the State level, to establish national control over WMD-related material in the areas of accounting/securing, physical protection, border and law enforcement, export and transshipment, for example. However, as the objectives of these resolutions go well beyond safeguards, they are outside the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, these UNSC resolutions, and other resolutions with their relevant measures to be implemented accordingly, are part of the legally binding instruments and commitments every State is obligated to undertake. They should be factored into the information acquisition process inherent to the IAEA’s Milestones 1-3 as discussed in the Milestones pub­lication (IAEA, 2007a).

For investors and decision makers, it is the generating costs on a full life­cycle basis that ultimately matter. However, numerous direct and indirect factors determine these costs. Standard direct costs include investments, O&M and fuel costs. Indirect costs are overheads shared by several plants such as head office costs (billing, customer service, ancillary support ser­vices) but also external costs, i. e., costs inflicted on society at large that are not reflected in the price of electricity, thus not paid by the electricity gen­erator. Typical external costs include, but are not limited to, the costs of air, water and land pollution from generation as well as fuel extraction and transport, accidents lacking sufficient liability coverage, and exposure to physical or economic disruption of supply lines.

The economics of a particular technology such as nuclear power cannot be analysed in isolation but only in comparison with its alternatives. For a private sector utility operating in a liberalized market the question usually is not either to generate or not to generate electricity but how to generate it most profitably. While nuclear energy is often very competitive on the basis of its low levelized life-cycle generating cost, its large upfront capital cost and long construction schedule make its financing more chal­lenging compared to fossil fuel investments. Regulated utilities in quasi — monopolized markets or government-owned generators are bound by supply obligations. In both situations the do-nothing option does not exist

and rejecting one option, say nuclear power, requires the adoption of a non-nuclear alternative. Hence the actual economics of nuclear power can reasonably only be determined with regard to its alternatives (using a level playing field) under given market and local conditions.

It is clear from Principle 17 of the Rio Declaration, in addition to other international environmental instruments, that international law requires States to carry out an EIA when the proposed project is considered to have ‘significant adverse’ implications for the environment. A ‘project’ is gener­ally accepted to be the execution of construction works or other interven­tions in the natural surroundings and landscape (EIA Directive, 2009, Article 1(2)). The obligation to undertake an EIA will not apply where the potential environmental harm that may be caused by the project is slight. Therefore, the potential environmental harm must be significant. The legal terminology is similar at a European level, with EU Member States being required to carry out an assessment where a proposed project is likely to have ‘significant effects’ on the environment. It remains, however, the dis­cretion of the individual State to determine when the potential environ­mental impacts can be classed as ‘significant’. A key question, therefore, is whether there are parameters to this discretion — are there any types of activity that will necessarily cause environmental damage of the requisite significance so as to require a mandatory EIA?

The EIA Directive is of some assistance on this point. Annex 1 of the EIA Directive lists projects which, by their very nature, must be made subject to a mandatory EIA. ‘Nuclear power stations and other nuclear reactors’ and ‘installations solely designed for the permanent storage or final disposal of radioactive waste’ are expressly listed in Annex 1 and so development projects of this nature will always trigger the requirement for mandatory EIA. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has recently ruled that Annex 1 activities carry with them a presumption of significant environmental damage or risk and therefore will always be subject to the ‘unequivocal obligation’ (Case C-431/92 Commission v Germany, para­graph 39) to carry out EIA, irrespective of whether the activity in question crosses the political boundaries of two or more Member States (Case C-205/08 Umweltanwalt von Kaernten).

The requirements divide flooding into three major causes: floods due to precipitation and other causes; water waves induced by earthquakes or other geological phenomena; and floods and waves caused by failure of water control structures. Flooding can be caused by one or more concurrent natural phenomena, such as heavy precipitation and rapid snow melt, high tides and storm surges, seiche and wind waves, among many other combina­tions. Flooding hazards from tsunamis associated with marine earthquakes or close to lakes and large rivers, and seiches originating from geological causes should be quantified to design protective measures. On river sites, floods and waves caused by the failure of upstream dams or other water retention structures have to be analysed to determine the level above the river surface where safety structures should be built to avoid floods or to protect key structures, systems and components.

An IAEA safety guide considers flood hazards for nuclear power plants sited on coastal and river sites (IAEA, 2003c). The guide considers each one of the flooding causes and identifies deterministic and probabilistic parameters which should be included in the design basis of the plant. Due consideration is given to the concurrence of different causes of flooding and the potential changes in the initial parameters due to climate changes or geographical modifications. The stability of shorelines and river beds is also a matter for consideration.

This section establishes the codes, standards and regulations applicable to the quality and environmental management system to be applied in the project. It should also require and provide instructions to the vendor for the preparation of his general quality assurance and environmental man­agement plan (GQAEMP) for the project, structured and organised to cover the topics defined in the applicable quality and environmental codes and standards. The vendor should be required to identify, prepare and provide the project procedures applicable to each of these quality assurance and environmental (QAE) topics. The vendor shall be requested to enforce the application of the GQAEMP by his subcontractors. Other subjects to be covered in this section are the owner’s requirements concerning quality audits, inspections and reports, and the disposition of non-conformances and of corrective actions in the project. Finally, this section should also contain the requirements for the preparation by the vendor of the occupa­tional health and personnel safety plan for the project.

Before fuel loading, the operators must be trained and qualified to operate the fuel handling equipment. Detailed procedures and operating instruc­tions must be prepared and exercised during the training period with dummy fuel assemblies. Strict attention to criticality such as boron concen­tration levels in pressurized water reactors (PWR) is essential at this stage. Once fuel is loaded, for light water reactors (LWRs) the upper vessel inter­nals and the pressure vessel head are installed. At this point, the operator carries out additional mechanical and electrical tests to verify that the reactivity control systems are functioning properly and reliably. The initial core monitoring system data will familiarize the operator with some practi­cal reactor core experience.

Some additional tests are normally performed just before initial critical­ity to provide further assurance that the plant systems and components required for plant operation perform as expected. The plant is then brought from cold shutdown to hot shutdown to initial criticality for the start of low-power physics testing. A variety of tests are performed to confirm the core design values as used in the FSAR and other technical analyses. Reactor power is then raised through steps with test programmes at each step. The tests include physics measurements, plant shutdown and heat removal capabilities, power transients, loss of site power tests, and instru­mentation and control checks.

After full power is reached and maintained for a period of time, the plant should be shut down and thoroughly inspected, and the commissioning data assessed. Any changes to the plant would be evaluated thoroughly to ensure that safety margins meet the design specifications and that the plant can perform reliably. Finally, plant acceptance testing is performed to ensure that the plant meets the contractual output. The plant operating staff typi­cally become proficient in the operation and maintenance of components and systems during the commissioning activity.

During operation, the licensee is required to maintain detailed records concerning operations, and the nature of these records is stated in the operating license. These can include the results of effluent and environmen­tal monitoring programmes, operating and maintenance procedures, results of the commissioning programme, results of inspection and maintenance programmes, and the nature and amount of radiation, nuclear substances and hazardous substances within the nuclear facility.

The operator must also manage plant configuration changes and the status of the SSCs over the life of the plant. A key aspect of this is the management of ageing, including both degradation and obsolescence, par­ticularly for those SSCs important for safety. It is likely that the licensee will have to demonstrate to the regulator that it has a comprehensive and systematic management programme to address SSC ageing. The IAEA has published recommendations for the establishment, implementation, and improvement of ageing management programmes that can be used to develop an effective strategy (IAEA, 2009d). According to this guide: ‘Evaluation of the cumulative effects of both physical ageing and obsoles­cence on the safety of nuclear power plants is a continuous process and is assessed in a periodic safety review or an equivalent systematic safety reas­sessment programme.’ The science, technology and regulatory aspects of ageing in nuclear power plants are considered in detail in Tipping (2010).

Nuclear power plants are often designed and constructed by groups of companies that come together for a single or a small number of projects. The NPPs that they construct, however, will exist for several decades.

Nuclear power plants by their nature are complex. They are composed of many components and interdependent systems that must operate in a manner that meets the design intent. Over many years of operation the plant will experience many changes, equipment will become obsolete, and physical changes in the condition of materials will occur.

It is incumbent on the operating organisation, therefore, that they main­tain the capability to objectively assess changes in plant condition and performance, appraise design changes and retain the knowledge base to do so. This capability will reside in those bodies of engineering personnel with the knowledge and experience to perform those duties and in the body of design data, drawings and materials acquired from architect engineers at the time of construction. Collectively this corporate intellectual feature is known as the Design Authority. The IAEA publication INSAG-19, Maintaining the design integrity of nuclear installations throughout their operating life, provides further detail.

In the above-mentioned report, the NEA suggested that the industry, research institutes and universities need to work together to coordinate efforts better to encourage the younger generation, as well as to develop and promote a programme of collaboration in nuclear education and train­ing, and to provide a mechanism for sharing best practices in promoting nuclear courses between member countries.

International collaboration would bring benefits, such as:

• Sharing costs among different countries, since development of training systems may be too expensive for one nation

• To counter a withering pool of training resources and knowledge

• To harmonize training standards at an international level

• To push initiatives for international skills retention, as well as to attract the next generation of scientists and engineers

• To demonstrate a united global position on future nuclear technology.

Taking into consideration the recommendations from the NEA and being aware of the benefits, some common education and training efforts at inter­national level have already started.

Before discussing those international initiatives, it is necessary to intro­duce one of the most important references in training: the Institute of Nuclear Power Operation (INPO).

7.1.3 Preparing for commissioning and start of operation

After the staff have undergone the initial training they should be associated with the experts of the reactor vendor in preparation of commissioning, operating and maintenance procedures and the technical specifications for operation that will include surveillance and in-service inspection schedules and administrative requirements. The O&M staff should also be involved in the process of review of such documents by the regulatory body.

A preliminary safety analysis report (PSAR) of the reactor and support­ing technical documents are provided by the reactor vendor. These docu­ments describe in detail the safety requirements laid down for the design and how the plant is able to meet these requirements under normal operating conditions, upset conditions and design-basis accident conditions. The PSAR also describes the engineered safety features and procedures for operator intervention to control the progression of beyond design-basis accidents and for mitigation of their consequences. The PSAR is a very important document not only for understanding the safety design of the plant but also for obtaining good familiarity with the behaviour of the plant under normal as well as abnormal conditions. The PSAR review together with the progressive review of the results of commissioning will be the basis for the regulatory body to issue a licence for initial fuel loading in the reactor core, first criticality of the reactor, ascension of power in stages and operation at rated power. A thorough study of the PSAR and the support­ing documents by the operating staff and their participation during the review of the PSAR by the regulatory body helps in acquiring good famili­arity with the design and operational safety aspects of the plant. Various modifications implemented during construction and those based on review of the commissioning results are suitably incorporated in the PSAR to produce the final SAR that correctly reflects the as-built plant.

Study of the SAR, the design and operating manuals of reactor systems and the equipment manuals and training on the reactor simulator will form the major component of the training of operating staff. The proficiency of the operating staff should then be checked through a system of getting checklists for individual systems signed by senior engineers, a plant walk­through, a written examination and an oral interview by a licensing board for their formal licensing for NPP operation.