Organizational and technical aspects of operating experience review and feedback activities

The screening and in-depth evaluation of operating experience and the implementation of the lessons learned from it are approaches being used more and more by the nuclear community, especially after the Three Mile Island accident, as an aid not only to reliable operation, but also to further improvement of safety. Ente Nazionale per l'Energia Elettrica (ENEL) has come to the conclusion that evaluating a wider data and information base and sharing operational information with as many operating plants as possible is to be highly recommended. It has therefore set up an ad hoc Working Group whose aims are the collection, screening and integration of data, and preliminary analysis and distribution of relevant experience and abnormal events. After discussing the constitution and the interfaces of the Working Group with other ENEL units, the paper outlines the principal problems encountered in performing each of the tasks. In particular, the abnormal event screening and analysis criteria adopted by the Working Group and a summary of the first trial period of experience are reported. (author)