Over time, organisations and the individuals in them can change in both composition and performance just as the condition and performance of plant and equipment changes as a result of in-service aging. Engineers will be familiar with plant aging issues and the maintenance practices that seek to reverse or halt the impact of in-service degradation.

The same imperatives apply to organisations and the individuals in them. It is important, therefore, that the effectiveness of organisations and the individuals in them is carefully monitored and evaluated as described earlier. This is akin to condition monitoring of plant and equipment.

Interventions to maintain organisational effectiveness can come in the form of continuous training, which is analogous to preventative mainte­nance, or remedial training, which is analogous to equipment repairs.

5.1.8 Knowledge management and succession planning

Nuclear power plants are designed to last for several decades and genera­tions in the workforce. This poses two main challenges for the operating organisation. Firstly, it must have in place the means to identify the need for replacement in a timely manner. This is vitally important because of the long lead times involved in training and developing specialist personnel such as reactor operators, for example. Secondly, operating organisations must ensure that the knowledge and experience acquired by the personnel leaving the organisation is not lost with their departure. These two impera­tives give rise to the need for robust succession planning and knowledge management programmes.

The IAEA has recognised that knowledge management in the nuclear industry represents an international challenge to safe operation and decom­missioning of nuclear facilities. They define the challenge and their commit­ment to addressing it in the following way:

‘There is clear consensus that nuclear knowledge is a strategic asset, which needs to be preserved regardless of national policies related to the utilization of nuclear power. Nuclear knowledge is needed for safe operation of nuclear facilities until they are closed down and further for their safe decommissioning and disposing of waste.

Alongside other developments, the changing nuclear workforce is raising issues of “knowledge management” underlying the safe and economic use of nuclear science and technology. In recent years the nuclear workforce has been aging, that is, more and more nuclear workers are approaching retirement age, without a corresponding influx of appropriately qualified younger personnel to replace them.

The complexity and magnitude of the problem needs a systematic approach to locate and represent the knowledge domains and to perform a critical evalu­ation of knowledge values.

In recognition of these and other trends, the IAEA executive bodies have called for measures to better identify the nature and scope of the problem, to understand what Member States are doing to address it, and to determine what co-operative international actions might be appropriate to enhance succession planning.

Knowledge and in particular nuclear safety knowledge is created and shared in the frame of the Agency’s Nuclear Safety activities. The IAEA is pursuing a vigorous knowledge management programme to ensure that existing knowl­edge is fully utilized by the current generation of nuclear professionals and is effectively transferred to the work force of the future.

Focus is on knowledge generation, codification, mapping, retention and transfer. Central to the KM activities is the establishment of an environment conductive to sharing knowledge including tacit knowledge.’

Utility technical training programmes which use the SAT infrastructure devised and employed in the US are very powerful programmes for the identification of knowledge and experience required in nuclear power plants and for institutionalising it in training programmes in which it becomes sustainable.