OREANDA-NEWS. During an audition before the Board of the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), AREVA presented its plan for quality improvement at the company’s French equipment manufacturing facilities. This approach takes into account the quality review initiated by Lloyd’s Register Apave in May 2015 of the company’s Le Creusot facility. This plan also responds to questions raised by findings reported since then, one concerning the tensile testing performed at Le Creusot’s laboratory and another related to welding defects on the thermal barriers of the reactor coolant pumps manufactured at the company’s Jeumont facility. These findings have been characterized, their consequences have been studied and those findings concerning EDF’s facilities have been provided to the ASN by AREVA and EDF. 

The guiding principles of this improvement plan are:

1.) To create a group of technical experts which will continue characterize and manage any possible quality deviations that could be found at Le Creusot and Jeumont and then, in collaboration with its customers, to evaluate the consequences for the acceptability of the equipment manufactured.

2.) To start the second phase of the quality audit concerning the investigation into how deviations identified since 2004 at Le Creusot were processed, whatever the manufacturing step may have been. In order to ensure an exhaustive quality review of Le Creusot and to understand all origins of these dysfunctions, AREVA will mobilize both its internal audit organization as well as independent experts. The company will include its other equipment manufacturing sites, Saint-Marcel and Jeumont, in this quality review.

3.) To establish a program to reinforce the quality culture at its sites in order to achieve excellence in safety, quality and performance.          

The details and timeline of this plan will be determined before the end of 2015 and will be presented to the ASN in January 2016.