Role and importance of Quality Assurance System on the achivement of Nuclear Fuel Cycle goals and objectives

According to a generally accepted definition, Quality Assurance (QA) represents "all those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that an item or facility will perform satisfactorily in service". On this definition, QA represents a management cont~ols ystem that the nuclear industry should establish and use in attaining quality and safety objectives for nuclear installations. Like any management control system, QA requires an organizational structure with defined responsibilities and functions, documented programs, established goals and objectives, and prescribed procedures for performance evaluation of the organization and projects respectively. There should be feedback of information on monitoring of performance to allow corrective action to be initiated and to ensure that the organization is pursuing its established objectives. As for any complex projects such as those in Nuclear Fuel Cycle Facilities, the responsible management has to establish project goals, to assign responsibilities and to implement control in the achievement of these goals. Failure of management to establish and implement QA effectively as a management control system may cause major problems in the quality of design, manufacture, construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear installations. Feed back experiences indicate that these problems are major contributing factor in the severe accident such as Chernobyl. It is of great importance, particularly for Iranian nuclear fuel cycle projects to embark, cultivate and establish managerial competency and organizational adequacy from the very beginning of the projects and throughout all stages to achieve the objective of safe operation of nuclear fuel cycle facilities. Quality Assurance System is an integral part of this requirement which has been discussed in this paper. In our own industry and especially for the nuclear faculties, there is a need to establish and improve QA in nuclear projects. In this way, in addition to the enforcement of formal QA requirements, it is necessary to establish conditions in nuclear projects such that formal implementation of QA meets its objectives effectively in practice. This requires proper orientation and training of management and staffs in all the organizations involved as long as continuous top managements' commitment and support. It calls for the establishment of correct interfaces between QA and other activities in design, manufacture, operation and regulatory control, and for means of motivating staff towards the achievement of quality. In particular, it should be note that QA specialists require their systematic training in the principles and techniques of the subject to be built on a strong basis of appropriate engineering disciplines.