Commissioning
Reviews and Inspections / Activities in CommissioningTÜV NORD Nuclear provides all services throughout commissioning nuclear facilities. These services are adapted to the processes to be followed in commissioning; their scope is outlined below.
Commissioning Instructions
Commissioning itself is performed on the basis of sufficiently detailed commissioning instructions. These instructions are derived for each stage of commissioning and based on the respective commissioning plans and programmes which are part of the Safety Case for commissioning. It is common practice (and reasonable) to review their drafts before they would be applied in the actual commissioning process. Care should be taken that those operation instructions and inserve inspections (ISI) instructions which are relevant for the activities in commissioning are also available in commissioning at least as drafts.
Supervision and Inspections
Independent supervision and inspections in commissioning of components, systems and the whole plant are carried out on-site; the intended participation of the external inspectors is denoted in the commissioning programme and defines the hold points in the respective steps in the commissioning process. This activity shall ensure that no harm to the personnel, public and environment arises from commissioning.
Evaluation of the Commissioning Results
The final step in commissioning is the evaluation of the commissioning results. This is done on the basis of the documentation completed during the commissioning process. The requirements on the documentation are defined in the commissioning programme.
Commissioning and TQC
Commissioning is in certain licensing environments addressed in the context of the more generic term testing, qualification and commissioning (TQC). Although, at first sight, commissioning and TQC appear to be more or less identical, there are significant differences:
- Testing is an integral part of both commissioning and qualification, i.e. it is not limited to commissioning. The significance of this term should be self-explanatory.
- It is common practice that, e.g. for first-of-a-kind plants, new technical solutions or computer codes, the efficiency of certain novel features credited in the safety analysis needs to be demonstrated in a specific qualification process. Other than commissioning, qualification might already become an issue in the planning stage, the design process or during the construction & erection stage which means that qualification is not only a process accompanying exclusively commissioning. The qualification process follows more or less the same logic as the commissioning process, i.e. it is based on a qualification plan which is further detailed in qualification programmes and instructions. The outcome of the qualification activities is documented and evaluated against the pre-defined requirements to demonstrate the adequacy of e.g. the chosen technical solution.
Reviews and inspections in commissioning are typically post-licence activities.
http://www.tuev-nord.de/en/Reviews_and_Inspections_12159.htm
