Annual Outage Coordinator has had his focus on upcoming Saturday for quite a while

Annual outages are of vital importance for the safety and reliability of the nuclear power plant every single time. A special feature of the outage to start at OL3 is that it is the first service outage at the plant unit.

-There are many things that we have had to think out from scratch. Determining timelines for the different maintenance activities has also been a challenge, as we have no prior experience. That makes the situation with OL3 completely different from the sister plants where this information has been gathered for more than 40 years, Saarinen concludes.

To be precise, the annual outage will be the first time ever that a plant unit of the EPR type (European Pressurized Reactor), which OL3 represents, is serviced in Europe. This attracts interest also from outside the Finnish borders as plants of similar type are currently under construction in France and Great Britain.

A massive entity

The role of the Annual Outage Coordinator is very central because he is responsible for preparing the plan for the outage, The Maintenance Plan. In other words, the plan that provides answers to questions such as what will be done, where, and when. And repeats these over and over again, as there are about 6,500 work phases in the upcoming service outage of OL3. And with almost 2,000 people carrying out the work, answers have been needed for quite a lot of questions.

Although Saarinen is the person responsible for overall coordination, he has not been alone in this task. The best experts in various fields, both from within TVO and from the equipment manufacturers, have provided assistance and support.

In fact, the crowd arriving to Olkiluoto from abroad to help with the first ever service outage is a large one, more than half of the total number. The equipment manufacturers also have a strong representation; 170 from Framatome, 230 from Areva, and 140 from Siemens, as well.

- The number of people arriving for the service outage is a large one, because in addition to the tasks defined by TVO and its subcontractors, the to-do list also covers the so-called punch list of the equipment suppliers, Saarinen explains.

At a good point

Although there is just over a week to the D-Day at the time of this interview, Saarinen appears relaxed. Calm rather than anxious. He admits that the planning phase is now at exactly the point it should be

- It is great that all the most important plans have completed the review and approval procedure here at TVO and the final plans have been submitted to the regulatory authority. The risk analysis calculations have also looked good, he says.

And what is the most essential thing when the objective is for the annual outage to go as smoothly and, in particular, as safely as possible? The coordinator ponders over this for a moment.

- Apart from good planning, good communication is important at least. In other words, a good flow of information. It is essential that everybody knows what is to be done and when. And they know that if problems occur, others must also be informed about them, he continues.

Problem solving is par for the job

The duration of the annual outage at OL3 has been set at 37 days. It could be even longer, but as the very design basis of OL3 allows maintenance activities to be carried out also during operation more than at the OL1 and OL2 plant units, for example, not everything needs to be done with the plant shut down.

The schedule does not include any actual empty slots; on the contrary, very small margins have been applied to scheduling as a default. Saarinen assures, however, that there are many contingency plans, and contingency plans for contingency plans for any surprises. No doubt challenges and problem situations will be encountered also during this outage.

- There is no getting out of the fact that tough spots and problem solving really are a kind of an unavoidable evil for the nature of this annual outage.

- I can guarantee, though, that we will assuredly be wiser after this first time, he goes on.

The Annual Outage Coordinator has already warned his family that during the actual annual outage, his working hours may be somewhat of the longer type.

- Can’t deny that I have committed myself to this for the next 1.5 months. And the family understood completely. Of course, I need some off days, but we have agreed how to appoint my responsibilities to others on those days, he says.

Text: Ville Kulmala
Photos: Tapani Karjanlahti