10. Communication. External communication. Press relations. Department

Transcription

1 Department 10. Communication GRS is an independent and scientifically substantiated source of information for the media and the public when it comes to the topics nuclear safety and disposal. In this context, GRS s press relations, website, events and information material represent important and frequently used interfaces. To be available as a competent contact person in public discussions is part of GRS s self-image as non-profit research and expert organisation. In 2008, the focus was not only on the external communication but also on the further development of the communication within the company. The expansion of the intranet portal»grs Intern«and many other activities contributed to the new design of the internal exchange and information processes and to the enhancements of a joint corporate culture. Sven Dokter Horst May External communication GRS as information source for the public. Both in the public and in the media, there is a pronounced interest in information relating to nuclear energy. This is true in the context of the fundamental debate within society in respect of its use, but even more in case of events occurring in nuclear facilities. GRS is perceived by the media as a neutral and competent information provider and consulted on a regular basis when an independent, scientifically sound expert opinion on an issue is required. Last year, press relations, website, information material and events were important channels when it came to providing information to third parties, coming into contact with interested parties and customers and to exchange information and experiences at an expert level. Press relations Press enquiries. In 2008, again, GRS was asked by journalists for information and expert explanations on incidents at home and abroad. The public interest was mainly focused on, among other things, the accident in the Krsko nuclear power plant in Slovenia, the incidents in the French Tricastin nuclear power plant, transports and transportation containers for spent fuel assemblies as well as the professional training of engineers in Germany and the next generation of scientists in the field of nuclear technology. 151

2 Internet Event in the Slovenian Krsko nuclear power plant. The incident in the Slovenian Krsko nuclear power plant attracted particular attention all over Europe as the ECURIE system (European Community Urgent Radiological Information Exchange) was activated for the first time since it had been established 21 years ago. All 25 EU Member States as well as Switzerland and Croatia are linked to the system. On 4 June 2008, a loss of coolant occurred due to a leak in an instrument line. The event was classified as Level 0 on the International Nuclear Event Scale INES. The activation of ECURIE would have been unnecessary. Due to the Europe-wide alarm release, the incident led to numerous enquiries by national printed and online publications. Incident at the French plant Tricastin. At the company SOCATRI, on the premises of the nuclear facilities in Tricastin in Southern France, a tank with a uranium-bearing liquid spilled in a treatment station for uranium-bearing waste water in the night from 7 to 8 July The liquid poured into an associated retention pond which, due to ongoing maintenance work, however, was not leak-proof at the time. Thus, approx m³ of the solution spilled on the ground. Part of it seeped into the soil, another part got into the creeks Gaffière and Lauzon via the rain water drainage systems. The supervising authority Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) classified the incident as Level 1 on the International Nuclear Event Scale INES. The incident caused great public response. And GRS was asked many times by journalists to give an expert assessment. Relaunch In 2008, the GRS homepage was completely revised with regard to its structure, design and features. Aim of the changes was it to streamline the website and to thus provide the visitors of the site with a more clearly arranged navigation. In the course of these alterations, layout and design were adapted to GRS s corporate design. The editing and administration of the new web contents is handled on the basis of a Content Management System (CMS) which was written especially for GRS. In 2008, nearly 350,000 people visited the GRS website. In many cases, due to the huge amount of information it contains, the website was also referred to for replying to press inquiries. Generally accessible GRS reports are increasingly published on the Internet as downloads. The availability of these reports to the public has thus been improved and, at the same time, printing and mailing costs have been reduced. Information material GRS publications. GRS publishes its own information material to meet the information requirements of the public. Interested members of the public, politicians, students as well as university lecturers and scientific staff belong to the typical clientele of these publications. To facilitate selection, the list of publications was updated again in 2008 and made available for download from the GRS website. In addition, a number of GRS reports comprised in the list of publications can also be downloaded from there. 152

3 Eurosafe Forum The ETSON Partners BEL V, GRS, IRSN, UJV and VTT (From left to right) Jacques Repussard (IRSN), current ETSON chairman, is pleased with the new partners signatures on the Memorandum of Understanding, as are Aleš John (UJV) and Seppo Vuori (VTT), Hans J. Steinhauer and Lothar Hahn (both GRS), and Benoît de Boeck (Bel V) GRS events International scientific exchange of experience. GRS takes part in a continuous process of exchanging experience with other experts and maintains a network with relevant expert organisations worldwide. This exchange of experience is implemented by, among other things, GRS staff participating in international committees and taking part in meetings, workshops and conferences hosted by other organisations. GRS on its part organises numerous own scientific events and invites experts from Germany and abroad to take part. The most important events in 2008 were the international EUROSAFE Forum in Paris and the GRS expert forum in Cologne. EUROSAFE Forum 2008 in Paris 10 th anniversary. An anniversary could be celebrated on 3 rd /4 th November in the Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris: The 10 th EURO- SAFE Forum for nuclear safety. Approximately 400 guests from 27 countries took part. The general topic of the forum was»the role of Technical Safety Organisations (TSOs) in the context of increasing demand for safety expertise«. Expansion of ETSON. On the occasion of the forum, two additional TSOs joined the»european Technical Safety Organisation Network«(ETSON): VTT from Finland und UJV from the Czech Republic. Thus, within two years after its foundation by Bel V (formerly AVN, Belgium), GRS and IRSN, the network could be expanded to five TSOs. The network is still open to other European TSOs. 153

4 EUROSAFE FORUM Participants visiting IRSN s technical facilities In the emergency room: on the right, the mobile emergency box with the equipment necessary for self-sufficient operation In the simulator centre: the scope of the simulator comprises simulations not only of all French nuclear power plants, but also e.g. of the TMI accident Within the scope of the forum, some visits took place for the first time. The participants could visit the IRSN simulator and crisis centre. forum is it to introduce the tasks and the results of GRS s activities to the expert world and the interested public and to put them up for discussion. All available lectures held at the forum 2008 can be found on the EUROSAFE website ( Second GRS expert forum Information and discussions. In 2008, about 130 participants from authorities, operators, the nuclear industry, research and engineering institutions as well as universities were interested in the current GRS activities. On 7 and 8 April, they met in the»wolkenburg«in Cologne where they held lectures and discussions within the scope of the second GRS expert forum. With the public event series»grs expert forum«, a two-day event which has taken place annually since 2007, GRS has been providing information in numerous lectures on the GRS activities in the fields of reactor safety, final disposal and radiation protection. Objective of the GRS expert Continuing the expert discussions. Lothar Hahn, Technical and Scientific Director of GRS, concluded that the overall result of the»grs competitive exhibition«was positive. He announced that the events would be continued in the next year and beyond to thus resume the tradition of the GRS expert discussions which were replaced by the EUROSAFE Forum in The programme and the lectures can be found on the GRS website. First ETSON/EUROSAFE Summer School in Garching Academic session. From 25 to 29 August, the first»etson Summer School on Nuclear Reactor Safety Assessment«took place at the GRS location in Garching. The five-day pilot event was attended by 44 young scientists from Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain. It was organised by the members of the Junior Staff Programme (JSP) of GRS, IRSN and Bel V. The 154

5 GRS-Expert Forum: 130 participants at the Cologne»Wolkenburg«venue Displaying its performace spectrum at the»fachforum«meeting of specialists, GRS presents its current activities, thereby following up the tradition of the former»grs Fachgespräch«conferences that were replaced in 1999 by the international EUROSAFE Forum three organisations are partner of EUROSAFE and founded the European TSO Network (ETSON) in May Promoting and internationalising education. Colleagues of IRSN (France), Bel V (Belgium), the National Nuclear Laboratory formerly Nexia Solutions (Great Britain) and of GRS reported on their fields of specialty and work. In addition to that, questions on the contents of the Summer School were answered and case studies were presented within the scope of various group activities. A visit to the TU München (thermodynamics department), the Research Neutron Source FRM II and the GRS simulation centre were also part of the programme. International workshops at GRS Garching In the week from 31 March to 4 April 2008, three international workshops took place at GRS Garching. GRS was host of two OECD/NEA workshops and a meeting of the AER (Atomic Energy Research) Group D. In the BFBT-5 Workshop, vapour content measurements in a fuel assembly of a boiling water reactor which had been provided by the Japanese Nuclear Power Engineering Corporation (NUPEC) were evaluated. Parallel to BFBT-5, a session of the AER, Group D, took place during which the reactor physics and accident analyses of VVER-type reactors were dealt with. The UAM-2 Workshop (Uncertainty Analysis in Modelling) is an OECD/NEA initiative to introduce uncertainty analyses for neutron-physical calculations. EU procedure in case of Level 2 PSA analyses shall be harmonised On 15 May 2008, a workshop with 18 participants from the entire EU took place within the scope of the EU project ASAMPSA2 (Advanced Safety Assessment Methodologies: Level 2 PSA) at GRS Cologne. With ASAMPSA2, a draft for an EU-wide, standardised procedure for the preparation of a Level 2 PSA shall be created. In doing so, not only the procedures for the present but also for future reactor concepts are being primarily dealt with. 155

6 ETSON Summer School Training and further qualification for young scientists The»ETSON Summer School«is an important building block of competence maintenance: 44 young scientists from five different countries convened at GRS Garching for the first Summer School on the topic of»nuclear Reactor Safety Assessment«Summer parties of the RISKAU- DIT offices in Moscow and Kiev Professional exchange in Moscow and Kiev. On 2 June 2008, the traditional summer party of RISKAUDIT took place in Moscow. With about 180 guests from 7 Western and Eastern European countries, the event offered a platform for expert discussions which were resumed the following day with several discussions and presentations. On the evening of 8 July 2008, the traditional summer event took place at the Kiev office of RISKAUDIT where, again, approx. 150 guests used the opportunity to exchange opinions and ideas on projects currently being carried out and future projects in the Eastern European countries. Among the guests, there were high-ranking representatives of the licensing authorities from the VVER-operating countries, of the nuclear authorities and scientific institutions of the Ukraine as well as technical and scientific consultants of the Ukrainian supervisory and licensing authority. Meeting for the OECD/NEA research project SCIP at GRS Cologne Studsvik Cladding Integrity Project (SCIP). From 15 to 18 December 2008, the 9 th meeting of the Programme Review Group (PRG) and of the Management Board (MB) for the Studsvik Cladding Integrity Project (SCIP) of the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD/NEA) took place at GRS Cologne. The meeting concluded a workshop on the modelling of fuel rod behaviour. More than 50 experts from nine countries participated. Internal communication Importance of the communication within the company. The internal communication which every staff member actively and as well as possible takes part in creates synergies and improves the company s efficiency. In view of the different lo- 156

7 OECD/NEA research project fuel rod behaviour models A snapshot from the SCIP Management Board meeting in the large seminar room at GRS Cologne; SCIP chairman Gustaf Löwenhielm, from the Swedisch regulatory body SSM, is the second person from the right cations Berlin, Braunschweig, Garching near Munich, Cologne, as well as Kiev, Moscow and Paris, and considering the variety of fields of activity, internal communication is of particular importance. This does not only involve the pure transfer of information but also the possibility of the individual to participate across the boundaries of their respective location of field of specialty in the development of the company. Since 2008, the intranet portal»grs Intern«, the Future Lab and the staff dialogue have contributed to the enhancement of the information exchange and the corporate culture of GRS. Furthermore, the internal communication tools play a key role for the effective information flow within the scope of the technical work and for the maintenance of competence within GRS. Therefore, further development of such systems, e.g. in the form of data bases or online services for the internal training and further qualification, represented another focal point of GRS s activities in Intranet portal»grs Intern«Knowledge management and information exchange. Modern communication tools which include a company-wide network of all staff members on a Lotus Notes platform are important technical means for the internal communication. The intranet portal»grs Intern«serves the purpose to channel knowledge flows and to centrally reprocess them. Via»GRS Intern«, the GRS staff members have access to all information sources such as news, opportunities for further training, discussion forums, a press review, information on personnel-related and organisational changes and on the documentation of work processes and projects. Furthermore, the intranet provides access to a multitude of internal databases which are continuously updated and which contain ample information relating to specific topics. 157

8 Establishment of the GRS Future Lab Room for new ideas. GRS s innovation concept»future Lab«was introduced in 2008 as a tool to generate ideas and visions. With the support and co-ordination of experienced staff members, younger colleagues develop ideas in the Future Lab e.g. on new products, but also on the further development of the corporate culture and take part in the implementation thereof. During the first meeting on 13 July 2008, suggestions relating to external and internal measures were worked out. Staff dialogue Discussing. On 29 May 2008, the first staff dialogue took place at the GRS location in Cologne. This is a discussion format which both the staff and the general management take part in. In the future, there will be a staff dialogue at each GRS location once a year and give all GRS employees the opportunity to discuss with the general management all issues concerning the company. One of the first results of the Future Lab was the establishment of a pool of ideas in the GRS intranet portal. The pool of ideas also shall help making the staff members experience beneficial to the further development of the company. In contrast to a classic employee suggestion scheme, here the suggesting colleague does not only communicate his or her idea to an examiner, but puts it up for discussion to all staff members via the intranet. This provides the opportunity to make supplementing suggestions or to further develop the idea. Also, the staff members can share their assessment regarding the feasibility which improves the basis for decision. Thus, the suggestion scheme becomes transparent and interactive. 158