Decommissioning organization
From NKM WIKIDOC
Definition
An organization involved in decommissioning nuclear power plants
Description
Decommissioning activities are very broad and long term and include a number of challenging technical issues including waste characterization, treatment, packaging and storage and environmental remediation sometimes on a large scale such as former uranium mining sites or legacy nuclear sites.
Knowledge Management challenges for decommissioning
- the extremely long timescales over which both explicit and tacit knowledge needs to be transferred particularly in the case of waste management
- the unique nature of many emergent technical and engineering challenges requiring innovative techniques which test the knowledge creation and collaboration processes of the organization
- the change in the knowledge and training required by operational personnel compared to that for routine operations
- the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next
- Knowledge and information is generated and used right from the design phase of a facility through to its final closure and the future treatment of the site and the radioactive waste produced in the decommissioning process. The timescales for decommissioning mean that owners and operators need to have access to knowledge generated over many decades in order to make intelligent decisions and to ensure that the necessary knowledge is available at the point of action
- Attention is necessarily focused on the technical and engineering aspects of decommissioning however the process of managing the critical knowledge needs also to be addressed and integrated into the overall decommissioning and remediation programme for example nuclear facilities moving into the decommissioning phases normally possess limited expertise in decommissioning and the appropriate knowledge management policies and training programmes for the plant personnel, contractors and regulators
