Regulations and equipment qualification programme for increased operating safety at Ignalina NPP

In 1996 Ignalina NPP issued the safety analysis report (SAR) for its unit 1. Task 6 of this report was dedicated to the equipment qualification. An independent group of international experts performed an in-depth safety review of the SAR. One major conclusion of the SAR/RSR assessment was that there was no formal EQ programme at Ignalina NPP and the respective recommendation of the SAR/RSR was to develop and implement an EQ programme for equipment important to safety. The first step of this development work is the preparation of VATESI requirements for qualification of systems important to safety of nuclear power plant. Since 1999, in co-operation with SIP, VATESI started collecting the available information about experience in EQ, in parallel with their efforts in familiarisation with relevant IAEA codes on the safety of NPP, international standards (or national regulations of other countries), codes and guides of countries having advanced approaches such as Germany, the UK, France and other EU countries. As result, in 2000 VATESI had already prepared a draft of the document ''General regulations for qualification of system important to safety of a nuclear power plant''. From November 2000 to October 2001, a PHARE-funded project, entitled ''support to the Lithuanian nuclear power safety inspectorate VATESI and its technical support organisations (TSOs)'' was performed. The task 3 of this project was dedicated to the assistance to VATESI and its TSOs in the development of national regulatory guidelines for the equipment qualification and the implementation of the ENIQ (European network for inspection qualification) methodology in Lithuania This paper describes the work performed on the equipment qualification and the implementation of the ENIQ methodology within the framework of the PHARE project mentioned above. The paper presents also the main results of the project regarding these issues, the current progress at INPP in this area, the main recommendations and the future planned actions for the implementation of the EQ programme and the ENIQ methodology in Lithuania. (orig.)