Experts from eight countries to monitor operations at Czech Dukovany plant for three weeks

Experts from eight countries will monitor operations at the Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant for three weeks. The review by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) will run until 26 September. It will produce a report assessing individual areas against the world’s best practices, plant spokesperson Jiří Bezděk told CTK today. The international review is repeated every four years.

"The mission comes during the outage of Unit 2, when there are many times more people on site and a huge number of activities are under way," said plant director Roman Havlín.

The planned unit outage began on 29 August and will last approximately two months.

The 26 experts will independently review the status of nine key areas of operations during the mission. They will observe the work of plant employees and contractors. Their focus will include leadership and personal accountability, human performance and error-prevention tools, equipment ageing, quality and risk management, handling unplanned maintenance, and recruiting new employees, the spokesperson said.

WANO international reviews have been carried out at Dukovany since 2007, and this year’s is the fifth. Last year, the plant also hosted an OSART mission under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); these missions take place approximately every ten years. The reviews not only result in recommendations on how the plant can continue to improve, but also identify practices that can serve as an example for other nuclear power plants around the world, ČEZ said.

The Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant has four units, which were commissioned between 1985 and 1987. South Korea’s KHNP won the contract to build two additional units. Geological surveys for the new units began last month.

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