Olkiluoto is Kalindee’s workplace for at least a year
Having been brought to Finland based on a cooperation agreement between TVO and French company EDF, Kalindee Chapus Aubeeluck started work in Olkiluoto in October. The plan is to further intensify the exchange of information between Olkiluoto 3 and its sister plant Flamanville 3 in France and it is precisely to this end that Aubeeluck works in Finland. It is not to be a brief visit as Kalindee’s posting in Finland is for at least a year.
Of the two plant units referred to above, OL3 is the forerunner. It has now been in regular electricity production for two and a half years already. Flamanville 3, on the other hand, is still at the commissioning stage, albeit almost at the end of it.
– Following the recent major transients implemented at 60% power level, the Flamanvillen EPR is now preparing for the final start-up phase, explains Aubeeluck who prior to her current posting worked at EDF as a fuel and safety engineer.
At the final phase, the power level of the French reactor will be increased from 60% to 100%.
– The goal is to verify the performance of the control system as well as the reliability of the plant, safely and in steps. And this is where the lessons previously learned in Finland can be most useful, Aubeeluck says.
She has worked in the nuclear industry for about ten years. She holds two Master of Science degrees – one in nuclear safety and the other in environmental technology.
Bidirectional flow of messages
TVO and EDF launched closer cooperation between OL3 and Flamanville 3 already in 2014. Previously, this cooperation was mainly based on regular meetings with predetermined agendas.
– Initially, meetings took place 1–2 times a year between the plant’s Directors of Production and operations supervisors, using fairly fixed agendas, explains Heikki Lukkari, who is the Plant Manager of OL3.
According to him, a decision was made a few years back to change the cooperation approach to be more on the as-needed basis. The decision has proven to be a correct one.
– We now communicate, share operating experience, and support each other more effectively whenever the need arises. A good example of this was during the annual outages of this year in the spring, when it only took a couple of phone calls and emails for Flamanville 3 to send one instrumentation cable to Olkiluoto on loan for the weekend, Lukkari tells.
Aubeeluck’s work point is located in the OL3 office building. This is the logical place as the daily monitoring of operating experience at OL3 plays a key role in her duties. Now she is quite literally surrounded by OL3 experts.
A key part of Aubeeluck’s work is to prepare weekly reports on operating experience from OL3 for distribution to the Flamanville organisation. Information also flows in the opposite direction, as Aubeeluck prepares similar reports for Olkiluoto on the most important operating events and experiences at Flamanville 3.
Technical issues related to plant engineering are examples of topics that can be pondered within the cooperation agreement.
– This exchange of operating experience and technical information enhances the safety and performance of both plants.
Her view is shared by Jere Tammela who is Aubeeluck’s Administrative Line Manager in Olkiluoto.
– Of course, we are only at the start of the cooperation but I have already had feedback on how the reports prepared by Aubeeluck have been useful also to us, Tammela says.
A brisk start
Aubeeluck started in Olkiluoto a little over a month ago so the details of the cooperation are still being refined.
– However, I have had a good running start and my colleagues here have been nice and helped me, she says with gratitude.
In this short period, she has been positively impressed by how efficiently people work in Finland.
– All my questions have been answered very quickly and also in other respects I feel that moving from talk to action takes place really swiftly here.
She can even already give a concrete example of the benefits of the cooperation.
– Flamanville was experiencing problems with the safety relief valves of the pressurisers. And as the same issues had been dealt with earlier also here, the exchange of information made it possible to find a solution also for Flamanville.
Earlier mornings
Aubeeluck admits that adapting to a completely new culture is still a work in progress. One noticeable difference is how strongly early mornings are favoured in the Finnish working life.
– In France, I usually started work at about nine o’clock, but often worked much later in the evenings, she explains.
One clear improvement over France is the commute. The drive from Pori to Olkiluoto is congestion-free, which is in sharp contrast to her home city Paris where traffic jams are more the rule than the exception.
Finnish language is interesting
The first impressions of Finland have been definitely positive. Her own positive attitude certainly contributes to this.
– I would describe our family as quite the adaptive kind. My husband and I have always been interested in different cultures and embraced this as an opportunity to learn new things. This is a great adventure to the whole family, she concludes.
Kalindee and her husband currently live in Pori with their two children, both under school age. The older of the two is in preschool and the younger only just started in daycare.
– Telling my children we had come to the home country of Father Christmas was a powerful sales pitch to our older child, Aubeeluck smiles.
Another telltale sign of her attitude is that she definitely wants to learn Finnish better.
– I do see that as a definite goal of mine. After all, most of the communication here is in Finnish so yes, I do wish to learn the language, she says.
Her aptitude for languages should make this easy. Originally from Mauritius, Aubeeluck is fluent in Hindi and Creole, in addition to French which is the main language at EDF. Not forgetting English, of course, the language used also in this interview.
Text and photos: Ville Kulmala
