Lessons Learned in Planning the Canadian Nuclear Legacy Liabilities Program

Abstract

In 2006, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) began implementing a $7B CDN, 70-year Nuclear Legacy Liabilities Program (NLLP) to deal with legacy decommissioning and environmental issues at AECL nuclear sites. The objective of the NLLP is to safely and cost-effectively reduce the nuclear legacy liabilities and associated risks based on sound waste management and environmental principles in the best interest of Canadians.

The NLLP comprises a number of interlinked decommissioning, waste management and environmental restoration activities that are being executed at different sites by various technical groups. Many lessons about planning and executing such a large, diverse Program have been learned in planning the initial five-year "start-up" phase (concluded 2011 March), in planning the three-year second phase (currently being commenced), and in planning individual and interacting activities within the Program.

The activities to be undertaken in the start-up phase were planned by a small group of AECL technical experts using the currently available information on the liabilities. Several internal and external reviews of the Program during the start-up phase examined progress and identified several improvements to planning. These improvements included strengthening communications among the groups within the Program, conducting more detailed advance planning of the interlinked activities, and being cautious about making detailed commitments for activities for which major decisions had yet to be made.

The second phase was planned by a dedicated core team. More and earlier input was solicited from the suppliers than in the planning for the first phase. This was to ensure that the proposed program of work was feasible, and to be able to specify in more detail the resources that would be required to carry it out.

The NLLP has developed several processes to assist in the detailed planning of the numerous projects and activities. These include developing a more formal procedure for setting priorities of the different parts of the Program, preparing an Integrated Waste Plan to identify the optimal suite of support facilities to be constructed, the creation of a series of "pre-project initiation" procedures and documents to guide the development of well-founded projects, and the use of staged decision-making to incorporate more flexibility to adjust Program strategy and the details of implementation at planned decision points. Several Case Studies will be outlined to illustrate examples of the application of these planning techniques.