Loviisa strengthens its leadership and performance monitoring to achieve success
From the Top
Vol 31 No 3 2021
15 December 2021
Peter Tuominen, Vice President Nuclear Safety Assurance at Fortum, explains why his plant is taking part in Action for Excellence as a pilot, and how its involvement will help his organisation to achieve its vision and goals.
My name is Peter Tuominen, and I am responsible for oversight functions, international programmes, and export controls at Fortum.
Fortum’s Loviisa nuclear power plant has historically good performance, measured in terms of both safety and reliability. For several decades, the plant has been systematically modernised with significant safety upgrades implemented over the original design. For example, Loviisa was one of the first of the older plants globally to implement severe accident management.
Based on our key performance indicators (KPIs), the performance of the station has been good. Despite this, we have identified gaps in its performance compared to the globally best performing plants. And these performance gaps have been identified in both internal and external assessments.
We also recognise that Loviisa hasn’t always led, planned, and monitored performance according to best industrial standards and practices. There was a tendency to look more in the mirror than into the future. We recognise that it is those plants that have a good approach to building leadership, and that deploy consistent and proactive performance monitoring, that typically perform better.
These are the key drivers for us to actively contribute to the industry’s Action for Excellence – Shaping the Nuclear Future initiative, which is being supported by WANO. As a pilot plant in Enhanced Performance Monitoring, we are establishing a strategy where the key target is to achieve a WANO 1 Assessment rating.
To further improve our performance, we have defined the following key ambitions. We want to have a WANO 1 rating for peer reviews and a WANO Index over 98, for our unplanned loss production to be in the best WANO quartile, for our SOER implementation to be over 95, and for all our AFIs in corporate and station follow-ups to be placed in category A or B. All of us at Loviisa are convinced that Action for Excellence (AfE) will help and support us in achieving our goals.
Besides this, the big question we have in front of us is plant lifetime extension at Loviisa nuclear power plant. Lifetime extension requires sustainable excellence in safety, reliability, and competitiveness. The market conditions are very challenging for nuclear in the Nordics. Sustainable excellence in safety is achieved only if it's a core value and ambition for people working in the operative line organisation, from the CEO to floor level.
My experience is that excellence cannot be achieved by external oversight, inspections, and assessments. The sustainable foundation is based on the operative organisation's ambitions for excellence and a clear understanding of what good looks like. External insights and peer support are extremely important, but the ambition and accountability in the operative line is crucial.
We have involved more than 100 people from different organisations in 18 sub streams that are all working together to support our ambition. This will help us to further strengthen the operative organisation's commitment and accountability from floor level, up to CEO level.