There are a number of issues to consider and organizational models that could be adopted to manage sites during safe enclosure. These are outlined below. However, whatever approach is adopted, the overarching, consideration is to ensure that safety management is the top priority. This includes all aspects of safety, such
as licence compliance, inspection, radiological and industrial safety and plant configuration. These themes are discussed at length throughout this publication, but the starting point needs to be safety. Safe enclosure can be in place for many decades and as such the people who manage and oversee these facilities are required to provide safe stewardship for several generations. The arrangements put in place need to reflect that.
A comprehensive overview of organization and management factors and issues during decommissioning phases is given in Ref. [82].
Safe enclosure can be managed in a number of ways, depending on the parent company, the number of sites or location. The two principal options are local or remote organization and management.
In local surveillance and maintenance, a site manager is based at or close to the site. In remote organization and management, the site manager is based at a location remote from the site. In either case, an appropriately sized and structured team may be in place, particularly during active phases, to safely take the site through to final dismantling. Team size and structure can depend on a number of variables; for example, availability of skills and personnel, specific hazards at the site (or sites), potential combination of functions and the extent to which third party (contractor) resources are used to support activities. It is also possible for the remote team to manage multiple sites. Licence requirements may impact on the location, size and roles and responsibilities of the organizational structure adopted. In either model, the site manager will usually report and be accountable to a higher position.
Before the safe enclosure phase begins, there is usually a significant reduction in personnel at the facility, which may impact on the local community, particularly in the case of remote, economically depressed regions where an operating facility is the main employer. Local communities can also have an impact on the smooth organization and management of the safe enclosure; for example, if the safe enclosure is perceived to be managed poorly, the local stakeholders will form a bad image of their counterpart and difficult relationships could develop.
Another potential impact is the availability of skills and knowledge from former workers and their willingness to support the new decommissioning phase; factors such as age profile or alternative employment options can have a bearing here. Annex II–7 discusses a case of staff reduction in the context of decommissioning.
A safe enclosure is expected to be there for a defined period of time. The number of staff needed needs to be estimated with great care. A passive safe enclosure requires access by maintenance staff a few times a year.
Maintenance staff need to be informed about the safe enclosure activities, operations and maintenance by means of well written manuals and detailed instructions. Also, accurate layout drawings of buildings, systems, equipment and components need to be available to the staff with specific emphasis on operating systems.
In active safe enclosure, the need for staff is higher than in passive safe enclosure, as there will be more frequent activities on-site. Typical work may be the collection of samples from ventilation air in the stack or groundwater samples, performing patrols and operating systems. Additionally, more maintenance is needed in active safe enclosures, as there are a lot of operating components. This means the number and skills of the staff are not easy to estimate. Staff need to have a broad knowledge of what is going on in the safe enclosure, and required maintenance, repair and operation. The more staff employed, the higher the operational costs for the safe enclosure will be. The operational costs of the safe enclosure should be kept to a minimum, but safety cannot be compromised.
Some regulatory bodies require redundancy in staff numbers. Defining the workload and qualifications needed is a good way to convince all stakeholders (e.g. the regulatory body and the operating organization’s top management) of the staff needed for safe management of the safe enclosure.
8.1. STAFFING FOR LONGER PERIODS
The duration of safe enclosure in most cases may be longer than the working lifetime of its personnel, thus knowledgeable staff can become a problem in the longer term. In general, the first crew is recruited from the operations staff or the staff who prepared the facility for safe enclosure. Staff who have been involved in the PSE phase can be particularly valuable, as they have the knowledge of how to operate the new equipment and are familiar with the configuration of the safe enclosure. Staff who were involved during the operational lifetime of the facility are also valuable because they know the facility’s operational history. They also know about operational problems and maintenance, along with other issues and how they were solved during the operational period. This includes any legacy hazards such as local contamination or hot spots.
When experienced personnel retire, there may be two problems to deal with. First, there is the recruiting of new qualified personnel, and second, the task of transferring knowledge to the new recruits.
As work during the PSE period and during an active safe enclosure phase requires specific skills, it might be difficult to recruit personnel with the appropriate skills. This is particularly relevant when the safe enclosure is a stand-alone facility. Recruitment of personnel who can meet appropriate response times is essential so that they are able to arrive in an acceptable time at the safe enclosure to address problems. When there is no nuclear network in the area, recruitment focuses on individuals with a broad set of skills and knowledge, as the work may consist of mechanical jobs, electrical jobs, chemical and health physics work. The second problem is how to train the new personnel and how to transfer experience. This can only be achieved by a training programme dealing with all aspects of safe enclosure management. Learning from information from records and experience gained during the safe enclosure phase needs to be part of the training programme. Section 11.4 highlights the importance of records in a safe enclosure strategy.
As well as ensuring that there are personnel trained to do the required work at any time, it is also important to consider the longer term requirements. Planning for the succession of skills or roles will ensure that adequate knowledge and capability are available for the full term of the safe enclosure phase and that this phase can be completed safely. Mismanagement of the safe enclosure period can result in a lot of regulatory attention; therefore, a resource plan may be required that includes contractors, specialists and other resources to have the minimum number of personnel available so that proper succession management can be demonstrated.
8.2. MULTIDISCIPLINE WORK FORCE
During a safe enclosure phase there are several tasks to be performed by the staff. In principle, these are the same as in an operational nuclear facility. The workload for each task, however, is much lower in a safe enclosure than in a nuclear facility in operation. A typical example of this situation is the health physics routine. In principle there is no difference between taking a smear test in a safe enclosure or in a nuclear facility in operation. The only difference is the number of smears to be taken. The system for the maintenance and calibration of the equipment and the reporting and record keeping of results is the same. Therefore, the time it takes to do the job is shorter in a safe enclosure than it is in a nuclear facility in operation. This applies to almost every job. This brings the opportunity to combine several functions of staff. Combining staff functions leads to staff reduction. It is advisable to have staff functions combined in a logical way. A typical combination of staff functions are health physics with chemistry, and all maintenance in general. There is, however, a limit to combining functions. It is obvious that not all work can be done by one person. Also, some positions may require acceptance by the regulatory body, such as for the person responsible for health physics or the person responsible for security. Some regulatory bodies require distinct responsible persons, and do not easily allow different functions to be combined in one position. One reason for this regulatory approach is the potential loss of knowledge if such a multiple-task person leaves the company or is unavailable.
8.3. ORIENTATION AND TRAINING
The staff and contracting organizations of a safe enclosure need to be trained and periodically retrained to remain qualified for the job. Such training can be on-the-job training for routine work inside the safe enclosure but can also consist of special task training such as firefighting or first aid. Where safe enclosures are entered infrequently, initial off-the-job training may be required via, for example, drawings, manuals, lectures or 3-D simulations. The costs of training should not be underestimated, as such training can be compulsory for the whole lifetime of the safe enclosure (e.g. as a regulatory requirement or an insurance condition). External training can be expensive and may take time to be planned and implemented. New recruits will require more extensive in-class training, site induction and on-the-job training.
8.4. STANDBY REQUIREMENT
A standby schedule for safe enclosure personnel — staff and/or contractors — is necessary, because during the time when there is no personnel, on-site issues may come up that need immediate attention. The issues can
be anything from intrusion detection, fire, alarms, deliveries of goods and inspection visits by the regulatory body. It is obvious that the need for people on standby is more important for stand-alone safe enclosures than for multifacility locations. Safe enclosure personnel assistance to the (off-site) fire brigade can be essential. An appropriate response time between a call being raised and arrival on-site needs to be determined. The person on call needs to be capable of accomplishing the required actions and needs to be fit for duty and have the authority to make decisions. Straightforward instructions should be available to the persons performing the call duties and an overview of what actions should be performed in case by case situations is very helpful. Therefore, a record system describing responses to certain problems needs to be in place. This system should be updated every time an incident or equipment malfunction has occurred. As call duty can be an unpleasant burden to the persons who are on call, a rolling schedule can be put in place with sufficient personnel rotating the call duties. On call duty may be shared by staff and contractors in the case where contractors are the specialists and the responsibility remains with the licensee.