Nuclear power plant construction: What can be learned from past and on-going projects?

This paper presents a study performed by the European Clearinghouse on Operational Experience for NPPs and covering events related to construction, commissioning and manufacturing of nuclear power plants (i.e. events prior to the start of commercial operation). The events considered are both issues detected during the pre-operational stages, and events detected during further operation of the plant.This study summarises the analysis of 582 construction, commissioning and manufacturing related events reported to different databases. To help identify generic lessons learned, the events were classified into three main categories: construction, manufacturing and commissioning, and secondly, into sub-categories related to components: civil engineering, electrical components and Instrumentation & Control,…This paper presents the concrete lessons learned for the different components.

► Three different event databases were screened.
► 582 events were found to be relevant for this study.
► The most concerned groups of components are electrical components, I&C and welds.