CHAPTER 2: Team formation

Team formation

To ensure the success of the development and implementation of a plant-specific severe accident management guidance programme, it is crucial to assemble a team of a selected number of experts in various disciplines from the operating organization. This team will be the staff responsible for the development and implementation of the SAMG programme. The project leader defines the responsibilities for the work within the different phases of the project. The team should be able to call upon experts in other fields on an 'as needed' basis. The permanent part of the team is referred to as the 'core team'.

It is strongly recommended that individuals with expert knowledge and experience with plant systems and their capabilities be included on the core team as their knowledge and experience will be required to develop and assess the use of plant systems and equipment in mitigation strategies. Similarly, experienced safety analysts who have a solid understanding of accident phenomenology should be included on the core team.

If a generic product is used, it is generally beneficial to also have experts involved from the vendor of the generic product, either on an as-needed basis or as a permanent member of the core team. In addition, a comparison of the important design features of the actual plant versus the generic plant needs to occur and the development team members require a good knowledge of the plant design specifics. Due to the nature of including plant specific details, SAMGs can vary quite widely between different types of reactor (e.g. the type of fuel, the type and pressure of the coolant, the size and strength of the containment) and also between different reactors of the same type.

If a sister plant has developed or is developing a SAMG programme, it is beneficial to have regular contact and possibly feedback ('peer review') from that plant.

If a unique program is created ('from scratch') and a technical basis for SAMG must be developed to understand the plant behaviour in a severe accident, including the plant response to SAMG actions, technical experts may be needed to set up the necessary experiments or to interpret existing experiments to the plant at hand.

Knowledge in several areas will be required for an effective project; this includes accident phenomenological knowledge, plant knowledge and knowledge of human factors.

The core team should consist of staff familiar with the following disciplines:

  - Operations, operations support, plant technical support;
  - Systems engineering;
  - DBA and DEC analysis including severe accident analysis, PSA;
  - Emergency planning (with knowledge of the plant specific emergency arrangements, offsite response and offsite
   emergency services to support onsite response, such as fire fighters or police);
  - Project management (with knowledge of scheduling and integrated development of work);
  - Security.

The core team should include staff from operations, maintenance, engineering and training.

At the beginning of the project work it is necessary that all members of the core team familiarize themselves with the relevant background information, e.g.:

  - Existing documents and results of research work related to the project objectives;
  - Supporting accident analyses and PSA studies available and/or needed;
  - Plant design and systems capabilities;
  - Personnel that will be using the final document and the chain of command which might be different in the preventative
   versus mitigative domains;
  - Training that will be needed for end product use, i.e. a training needs analysis should be conducted;
  - Time and resources available for the project.

Members of the team must then familiarise themselves with the selected SAMG programme, possibly one of the available generic programmes, or define the work scope for a plant-unique approach from scratch, both for the experimental and the analytical work.

For the remainder of this course, it is assumed that a generic program is used as a basis, as the scope of a full and comprehensive experimental and theoretical development programme is outside the scope of this course.

The team members must familiarize themselves with the plant's design, its operation including the plant procedures for abnormal conditions, its safety analysis including the PSA (if it exists) and its documentation.

The core team should have sufficient budget and time, and preferably be fully dedicated to the development project, i.e. set free from their normal duties, so as to not interfere with their primary responsibility of creating the SAMG programme.