SOCIETAL AND SUSTAINABLE RESPONSIBILITY INNOVATION

The impact of a company includes all qualitative and quantitative modifications (negative or positive) of the environment and its functioning (human or natural), created by a project, a process, an organism or organisms, or a product or products, over its entire life cycle.

A positive impact results from activities that benefit the said environment (human or natural), or whose objective is to prevent or correct the negative effects of the activities and externalities of the actors of the nuclear sector. 

The assessment of a positive impact of a company’s project, process or product is a) qualified by the creation of added value for the stakeholders that may be affected by the company’s activities (local and territorial communities, end-users, natural and living environment) b) quantified through the measurement of flows and potential environmental and socio-economic impact indicators (specific indicators for water, air, soil resources and human health, but also economic indicators of human and territorial development).

NUCLEAR SAFETY INNOVATION

Nuclear safety is a term defining all activities related to improving and/or maintaining the integrity of the mechanisms, processes, tools or instruments containing radioactive material, to protect people and the environment from harmful effects.

This definition is not only restricted to nuclear sites. This Award is also open to applications dealing with logistics, manufacturing, components (non-exhaustive list) which bring additional nuclear safety to a global process.

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE INNOVATION

Operational excellence is a systematic and methodical approach led inside the company in order to maximize performance in terms of productivity, quality of products and reliability, nuclear safety, and more generally of performance...

SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT INNOVATION

It is defined as an integrated, systematic approach to identifying, acquiring, transforming, developing, disseminating, using, sharing, and preserving knowledge, relevant to achieving specified objectives.

Knowledge Management (KM) has been introduced to the nuclear industry as a response to the aging nuclear industry workforce, where the generation that designed, commissioned and initially operated these plants has begun to reach retirement age. KM tools for capture and transfer of knowledge from this aging workforce to its younger replacements have been emphasized.

While KM has certainly been used successfully for this purpose, KM has a larger, on-going application over the life of an NPP and beyond and this requirement is now a key feature of future workforce planning and development criteria for the New Nuclear Build programmes. Knowledge is often described as either Explicit, Implicit and Tacit categories.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES INNOVATION

In this category, “Products” are defined as “technology bricks” or technological building blocks which will contribute to shape the present and future nuclear technology facilities, such as that cannot be qualified as “product” any project of a fully designed reactor. “Services” includes all processes and methods of an organization. The products and services can be located anywhere along the nuclear value chain.

The OECD, in its Oslo manual, defines innovation as the “implementation” of a new or significantly improved product (good or service) or process, a new marketing method, or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization or external relations.

Therefore, the quality of innovation of the products and services will be determined based on the solution they provide. Each application will have to demonstrate the key differentiator of their innovation, with a comparison of its proposed cases of use with current ones, providing clear evidence of how the proposed product/service sets itself apart from existing solutions.