The Application Of Project Management To Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant Outage Management

Guangdong Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station (GNPS)is the first large commercial PWR(pressuried water reactor) nuclear power plant(NPP) in Chinese mainland. We recur to external capital and fetch in ensemble technical equipment to build up Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station. Commonly, Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station have one refuel and outage every other 12 or 18 months because of PWR(pressuried water reactor) nuclear power plant(NPP). Particularity, The refuel and outage is a importable process as well as a key step in nuclear power plant(NPP).Not only it have importable character such as working time short, mass item, frequency in state changed, strict with safety and quality, high standard for technology , complex contact between different department and a lot of input, but also its results affect to NPP safety and economy. Though The refuel and outage is a complex project, high safety, high quality and high efficiency of refuel and outage is a aim as best NPP manager can in the world. Outage management is a complex task which involves in respect of the plant policy, the coordination of available resources, safety, regulatory and technical requirements and, all activities and work before and during the outage.This report discusses the plant outage strategy and how this strategy is actually implemented. The report presents some suggestions that can be used at nuclear power plants with the aim to optimize. Firstly,the developments and related theories about project management: With the development of project management science , the methodology of project management exert a profound influence on society and economy life. The development of project management has three characters :globality,multi-modality,specialization。Secondly , the conception and character of GNPS outage management: Nuclear power plant outage management is a key factor for good, safe and economic nuclear power plant performance which involves many aspects: plant policy, co-ordination of available resources, nuclear safety, regulatory and technical requirements and, all activities and work hazards, before and during the outage. In NPPs,the outage express the refuel and maintenance when the reactor is shutdown。One of the factors, which directly influences availability and costs is the outage durationand resources used. Plant outages are shutdowns in which activities are carried out between disconnection and connection of the unit to the electrical grid. Therefore, outage is the period where significant resources are expended at the plant. The main areas identified as most important for outage optimization by the utilities and government organizations participating in this report are: organization and management; outage planning and preparation, outage execution, safety outage review, and counter measures to avoid extension of outages and to easier the work in forced outages. Thirdly, the optimization of GNPS outage organization and management: The plant strategy should create mechanisms to enable all plant management levels to be involved in the outage planning, preparation, execution and review. Responsibilities within the organization should be clearly defined. Management expectations should be well communicated to the staff. Objectives and goals should also be clearly established and communicated. Organizational and management principles applied in outage management should be based more on process and quality management procedures than on thoseprocedures applied in multi-layer hierarchical organizations. The need of coordinating the efforts with all players has led to radical changes in the method of outage organization for some utilities. There are two predominant outage organizations: (1) permanent outage structure and (2) outage project team. The organization that has been most efficient, so far, is the outage project team which comprised of staff from the different plant departments, e.g. maintenance, operations and engineering. The current outage organizational of the type of the Infirmness matrix or the equilibrium matrix in GNPS is confronted with challenge of high standard. The optimization strategy about the outage organizational is that the current outage organizational of the type of the Infirmness matrix or the equilibrium matrix is changed to the outage organizational of the type of the strong matrix or the type of the item, such as increasing full time workers, promoting the outage manager and building outage office building. Fourthly, the nuclear safety management optimization of GNPS outage: The outage period should be considered as part of plant operation, therefore the operability of needed systems andfunctions should be assured and planned. Tools for monitoring the configuration of the plant should be implemented. Outage probabilistic safety analysis (PSA) is a good tool to overview the overall safety level during different outage phases. Other tools are risk monitors, schematics over actual planned operational status, and shutdown safety check lists. A safety culture should be developed within the plant staff. Every employee should be sensible to identify problems and deviations from the normal plant conditions during outage. A good reporting system should be implemented to improve the safety culture and enable problems, failures and near miss events to be prompted and adequately reported. Resources should be allocated to take actions to solve reported issues. Quality assurance measures should be implemented throughout the planning, preparation and execution of the outage in order to enhance quality of the work and support nuclear safety. Fifthly, the planning management optimization of GNPS outage: Outage planning involves many different issues such as co-ordination of available resources, scheduling, safety, regulatory and technical requirements and, all activities and work before and during the outage. For each outage period a detailed...