Nuclear Industry SIG

Kathryn McCloghrie, CMIRM, Chair, Head of Corporate Strategy at Sellafield Ltd

The nuclear industry has two characteristics which make it different from other businesses in this time of Covid-19. One is that nuclear sites are not things which we turn off and walk away from and the other is that the provision of baseload electricity is just as important now as at other times. For these reasons, our sites remain open and we have had to address the balance of risk associated with maintained minimum operations whilst minimising the risk to the workforce. We had business continuity plans in place for some critical activities, and we have mature emergency response and crisis management arrangements to respond to events. All of these have enabled us to respond promptly and prudently to the changing situation.

We have worked hard to apply our knowledge and experience from control of radioactive contamination to managing the spread of the virus, both invisible and both potentially spread through touch or airborne particles. Unfortunately our sites are also quite small and congested and we have pinch-points for access control and radiological monitoring, making it more challenging to maintain social distancing. The industry is relatively small and tightly knit and we have global networks of operators who are very familiar with sharing learning from experience. These networks have been ready in unusual times to give us support and benchmarking opportunities.

Nuclear sites also have close ties with their local communities, and we have been working closely with local resilience agencies to ensure that we can maximise our contribution. In the early days of lockdown, the supplies of PPE which we normally maintain have been carefully assessed so that we can release as much as we can to support local health services, whilst maintaining the appropriate levels for our own safety requirements. We also have large numbers of volunteers amongst our workforce, helping deliver services but also making PPE, and deploying some of our specialist skills. Examples include deployment of design capability to utilise 3D printing to manufacture PPE to meet the required safety standards and GIS mapping capabilities being deployed to help local responders. The fact that we are closely linked with local responders in business as usual times has made it easier for us to link into standard arrangements. We are largely working from home, meaning that we have had to increase our IT capabilities significantly to maximise the effectiveness of remote working; however when we return to a ‘new normal’ we will have learned a lot about how to make this work and understand where we might choose to make this a routine part of our business. In addition, as we re-start projects and plants which have been quiescent for an extended period, we will have different risks to manage and we are working hard on planning for re-start in a controlled and phased manner. Our risk teams are working with different areas of the business to understand the uncertainties and identify both threats and opportunities. We all know that the future will be different, although we don’t know what it will look like. Our risk professionals are contributing to scenario planning and horizon scanning, looking ahead to the period post-Covid and the threats and opportunities we may encounter.