Engineering and Procurement

The industry’s commitment to high levels of safety and reliability is a foundational element of the culture and must be maintained. However, it also must be recognized that over time, some activities have been pursued where the incremental gain from additional processes has not been necessary or cost-effective. Previous industry efforts to reduce unnecessary burden and eliminate low value work, while maintaining or improving safety and reliability, were effective in improving the efficiency of the operating fleet. This same pursuit of efficiency in processes has not necessarily been applied to new nuclear construction projects. It must be recognized that there is a need for engineering to be flexible, adaptive, and timely to support emergent issues that come with advanced reactor designs and large-scale construction.
Nuclear design efforts must apply or adopt similar approaches to pursue increased value and improve efficiency while maintaining focus on safety and reliability. The actions to address this challenge are to develop procedures and processes that clearly define when nuclear versus non-nuclear/commercial design methods can be used and adopting risk informed or graded approaches to design activities. A firewall must be erected to separate the commercial aspects to ensure a right-sized approach. Adopting a mindset of “optimal effort to achieve maximum effect” will aid in delivering nuclear designs that achieve the levels of safety and reliability expected in a nuclear plant in an economical way.