1) Background
Continuation of TACIS OSA (On-Site Assistance) at South Ukraine NPP.
The TACIS nuclear programme is aiming at enhancing safety of NPPs in CIS (Commonwealth of Independent states) countries. The execution of the TACIS nuclear programme is based, among others, on the creation of close partnership between a NPP from the CIS and a nuclear Utility from EU (“On-Site-Assistance”).

2) Objectives
The general objective of the project was to improve operational and design safety at South Ukraine NPP.
For that, it was requested to provide general on-site assistance in operation and maintenance activities containing:
• overall coordination of the interfaces in the project;
• permanent exchange of operational experience;
• common identification and definition of issue topics;
• improvement of safety culture;
• training activities;
• implementation of the following tasks (soft OSA):
o welding procedure qualification;
o support to maintenance project implementation;
o support to review of normal and emergency operating procedures;
o support to on-site and off-site emergency preparedness.
Carry out specific supply and services projects through assistance in:
• preparation and revision of equipment technical specifications,
• support in tendering process,
• evaluations of the tenders during tender evaluations,
• follow up of contracting, manufacturing, acceptance tests and delivery of equipment,
• project follow up, mainly for operational procedures package, training programme, documentation supply and commissioning activities.

3) Project Results–Achievements
Several meetings were held for progress monitoring of OSA at South Ukraine NPP, and for necessary induced decisions. Many addenda have been signed during the progress of this project.
Operational assistance (so called “soft OSA”):
4 topics have been worked out in the frame of soft OSA:
• Welding qualification procedures. The scope of his topic was agreed at the beginning of the project: the methodology will be transferred from ENSA (Spanish company in charge of this topic) to experts form South Ukraine NPP, Energoatom and UNRA (Ukrainian NRA) in the following fields:
o generic application of ASME code for welding qualification;
o specific application of ASME code for welding qualification;
o welder’s qualification according to ASME code.
The job was performed in 3 missions:
o First mission at ENSA premises in September 1998: seminar on basic technologies used according to ASME code section XI to perform and complete a qualification of a welding procedure. A list of Ukrainian candidates to be homologated has been set up, and a Ukrainian panel, which would homologate the experts, has been defined.
o Second mission at South Ukraine NPP in March 1999: review by ENSA experts of documents that South Ukraine NPP has prepared in order to be used during the welding, and approval of the documents. Welding homologation activities were performed by several tests, and Ukrainian experts got a certificate of welding operators.
o Third mission in June 2000: ENSA experts checked the completion of the welding process qualification in detail. It has been concluded that all requirements form ASME and Ukrainian codes are met.
• Support to the review of normal and emergency operational procedures: this activity took place in September 1999 in Spain, during which experts from South Ukraine NPP and Energoatom attended several seminars in different Spanish nuclear organisations. DTN and Empresarios Agrupados conducted a training about the review of normal and emergency operational procedures, followed by a training at Tecnatom and Almaraz NPP.
• Support to off-site and on-site emergency preparedness: this activity took place in October 1999 in Spain. Two experts from South Ukraine NPP and one from Energoatom attended a seminar on basic plan for nuclear emergency at DTN premises. It has been followed by a second seminar dealing with NPPs emergency plan at Union Fedosa. The seminar were completed by a visit of Jose Cabrera NPP.
• Support maintenance project implementation: this mission was linked with the project U1.02/94J “system management of maintenance”. The scope of this activity was reduced after common agreement, and limited to provision of electronic cards for the second phase of SK-187 manipulator upgrading. At the end of this U1.02/96 general OSA contract, supply contract with the manufacturer of electronic cards was still not registered by Ukrainian government, and provision of these electronic cards could not be completed.
In addition, other punctual activities have been performed: visit by Ukrainian experts of “El Cabril” (Spanish radwaste storage centre), attendance of a South Ukraine NPP QA expert to a training course at Sebastopol, Ukraine and a training course at Volgodonsk NPP, Russia.
Specific projects (so called “hard OSA”):
• U1.02/96A “improvement of fire protection”: this project started officially in November 1997. From a former project of TACIS 1995, a fire hazard analysis and engineering technical specification have been written (first version in February 1998), commented, updated and approved finally with evaluation criteria in May 2001. In February 2002, EC informed that the type of the contract should be changed into a supply contract, and thus technical specification and evaluation criteria had to be modified. The modified version was still not approved at the end of U1.02/96 general OSA contract. In the meantime, this U1.02/96A project has been reprogrammed in TACIS year 2003, and is now running as U1.02/03A.
• U1.02/96B “review of normal and emergency operating procedures”: this project started officially in November 1997. From a former project of TACIS 1995, a technical specification for “improvement of normal and emergency operating procedures” has been written (first version in February 1998), commented, updated and approved finally in September 1998. Tender evaluation took place in October 1999, and consortium Tecnatom – EEAA – Siemens was awarded. Technical work was performed in 2000-2001, and final report with acceptance certificates of supplied equipment was issued in October 2001. Procedures developed in the frame of this project were fully operational at South Ukraine NPP in June 2003. Note that U1.02/96B deals only with a part of operating procedures.
• U1.02/96C “morpholine secondary water chemistry control”: this project started officially in November 1997. It is derived from a former project of TACIS 1995 for “assist to NPP to morpholine treatment”, which was aimed to support South Ukraine NPP in the licensing of test to prove the satisfactory performance of morpholine. The test took place along in spring 1998, and final report was issued in July 1998. Then, the new project U1.02/96C “morpholine secondary water chemistry control” was launched, and a procurement technical specification was written. A draft contract with selected supplier was proposed for signature to UNRA in September 1998, and UNRA requested to perform qualification of water chemistry procedures by MASMA, a Ukrainian laboratory. This was not included in the scope of the project. DTN and EC made an addendum to U1.02/96 contract, so that DTN could manage this requested qualification. In June 2000, DTN was informed that the qualification had to be performed by another Ukrainian laboratory, EKNA. Contract between DTN and EKNA was signed in December 2000. Technical work was performed just after, and activity was completed in May 2001.
• U1.02/96D “spare parts for safety relevant foreign valves”: the project started officially in November 1997. A technical specification has been written and approved. The procurement has been managed by direct agreement with appropriate suppliers, except for polar crane spare parts. Spare parts have been delivered in August 1999 (supplier IBL), November 1999 (suppliers Bopp&Reuther and KSB), February 2000 (supplier KSB) and October 2000 (supplier Sempell). Appropriate certificates of acceptance have been delivered following spare parts delivery. The training was performed at suppliers’ premises in November 2003. The project is completed with training performance.

4) Comments
DTN contract for general OSA at South Ukraine NPP was not renewed after end of U1.02/96, and another utility has been chosen in 2004 (Tractebel).
Specific projects had many difficulties. The main ones are the following:
• U1.02/96A was still not contracted after 7 years, and it was needed to reprogram it in AP 2003. This is mainly due to the fact that contract with the supplier has been changed into a supply contract by EC decision, and due to the very long process for technical specification approval by all counterparts.
• U1.02/96C had one-year delay due to unexpected request of UNRA (qualification by an Ukrainian laboratory). It was thus needed to make an addendum of DTN U1.02/96 general OSA contract In addition, selected laboratory changed (UNRA information), which induced again a delay.
• U1.02/96D was delayed for part of the scope, the one of supplier Sempell, which could not deliver on time all contracted spare parts. In addition, some of them were found faulty.

Further information
Further information on the project results could be sought from Energoatom and South Ukraine NPP.
The Project Final report is available at the JRC-IE archive.