Member Article

Leading UK Risk Management Consultancy Wins ONR Technical Support Contract

One of the country’s top risk management consultancies – Corporate Risk Associates (CRA) – has been awarded a new contract by the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to support their efforts in performing the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of Hitachi-GE’s UK Advanced Boiling Water reactor (ABWR).

The reactor designs, which energy company Horizon Nuclear Power plans to operate at sites in Anglesey and Oldbury, are currently going through the fourth and final step of the GDA.

The GDA, a necessary requirement for any prospective reactor technology to be operated in the UK, will be supported by CRA, and is a full and thorough design assessment.

CRA will help to ensure that the reactors meet the robust reliability standards of the regulator and can be operated safely. This will minimise the risk of human error across all nuclear safety situations to below acceptable limits.

The work will be led by CRA’s Human Factor’s service delivery team with esteemed specialist in Human Reliability, Safety Case and Task Analysis, Dr Les Ainsworth, acting as overall Technical Lead.

Les has led a distinguished career spanning over 40 years within the Human Factors sector and has built up a strong reputation for the practical application of ergonomics and psychology to complex industrial processes and systems in the Nuclear Sector in the UK and abroad. He has been heavily involved in supporting the ONR assessments for licensing the EDF and Westinghouse reactor designs for the UK.

Speaking about the contract win, he said: “We are delighted to be working on such an important Human Claims and Reliabilities assessment for the ONR and UK energy sector, which will be performed under CRA’s growing Human Factors service offering. Securing this contract is a testament to our increasing involvement in best practice human reliability analysis performed to support existing and planned nuclear developments in the UK and overseas.”

Founded in 2000, CRA has a strong pedigree in the nuclear sector having advised on the management of safety, risk and reliability across projects including the Magnox plant at Wylfa, all seven of the UK’s advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGR) and, the recently approved, Hinkley Point C. It is envisaged the project will take up to 12 months to complete with four CRA staff involved.

Boasting a team of 35 CRA prides itself on managing safety, reliability and risk across the nuclear, rail and defence industries, delivering scrutiny as part of licensing processes that ensure projects across these sectors can be operated safely and effectively.

Boiling Water Reactors are one of the world’s most common types of nuclear power generating technology and the ABWR is considered state of the art. Since the introduction of boiling water reactor technology, Hitachi has participated in the design, development and construction of over 20 nuclear power plants in Japan alone.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Scarab4 .