The importance of knowledge management in the decommissioning process

Abstract The operational period of nuclear facilities often spans several decades, while disposal facilities are designed to operate for even longer periods. This poses significant challenges, as these timeframes cover several generations of workers and are likely to see many changes in policy and technology. Decommissioning and decontamination of nuclear power plants (NPPs) will also be spread over several years, resulting in a life cycle in excess of 100 years, and the knowledge acquired in one stage is not always transferred to the next. On the other hand, it is a fact that nuclear organizations in most of the countries are facing an aging process of their professionals and an increasing number of retirees who possess knowledge critical to either operations or safety never before extracted from them. In this regard, the Nuclear Knowledge Management (NKM) is essential to develop and maintain the necessary technical knowledge and skills required for nuclear power programs and other nuclear technologies. Recognizing the importance of NKM, international organizations develop methodologies and guidance documents for planning, designing, and implementing NKM programs. In this sense, this paper aims to present some NKM tools and materials made available by the 2 main international agencies (International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Energy Agency) that can be applied in the decommissioning process, in addition to a bibliographic review. For this purpose, a total system of decommissioning the NKM system is required, where it is necessary to organize the data of plant design, maintenance history, trouble events, waste management records, etc.