Member Article

Risk Management Company Celebrates 15 years of Technical Support to the UK’s Fleet of Generating Nuclear Power Plants

The UK’s largest independent probabilistic risk management company, Corporate Risk Associates (CRA) is proud to celebrate 15 years of technical support to the UK’s fleet of generating nuclear power plants (NPPs).

CRA has been providing probabilistic safety analysis (PSA), human factors assessment (HFA) and more general safety case support to the Magnox NPP Wylfa, all seven of the UK’s advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGR) and the single pressurised water reactor (PWR) at Sizewell B for the last 15 years. CRA is now delighted to extend provision of support to the Nuclear New Build Generation Company (NNB GenCo) for the new NPP being built at Hinkley Point C.

CRA, on average, carry out around 20 projects a year across the existing EDF Energy NPPs, which involve annually maintaining and updating the PSA models to take account of operational experience feedback, reflect changes to the plant and safety case as well as helping to ensure that the integrated PSA/HFA models meet best international practice. In addition to this, the company also carries out research and development projects on topics including new and novel PSA models and methods, modelling of digital control and instrumentation, common cause failure and seismic PSA. CRA also develops and provides training courses to safety engineers working for nuclear utilities on the topics of PSA and HFA.

Commenting on the partnership, Hugh Stephenson, Principal Consultant at Corporate Risk Associates said “CRA has provided expertise and support to the eight EDF Energy NPPs since the development of the models to support the First Periodic Safety review. We are now regarded as the specialists in this niche area within the industry - that’s why the relationship continues in as much strength as it does. We are well known for having unrivalled expert knowledge of each of the PSA models and for providing value for money services.”

With plans now in place for new nuclear plants to be built on the site of Hinkley Point C, along with a whole host of new challenges surrounding plant life extension of the existing AGR fleet, the company feels that its 15 years of expertise in this area has stood them in good stead to continue to provide its expertise and support.

“Our specialist experience and knowledge of UK context and regulatory requirements has meant that we are very well placed to provide support to both UK and foreign companies involved in new nuclear build in the UK, whilst also continuing to support plant life extension of the UK AGRs which is vital to bridge the energy gap in the UK. We’re currently providing extensive support in the area of PSA and safety case development for the HPC project, which we are delighted to be involved in”, continued Hugh.

“CRA has just signed a new five year framework agreement with EDF Energy Generation that will ensure continued provision of specialist support to the existing nuclear fleet into 2020.”

CRA specialise in providing safety, risk and reliability consultancy services to safety critical industries including nuclear, power, transportation and defence. The company has five offices across the UK in Surrey, Gloucester, London, Warrington and Newcastle.

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