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Can you tell us about your role at EDF?
I am an engineer in the reactor doctrine group at EDF’s Technical Division, based in Lyon. I joined this team 3 years ago and have been working within the EDF group for 19 years. In particular, I spent several years working at various operating power plants.
In a nutshell, our work revolves around safety reports for the design of nuclear reactors.
Overall, there are four main activities concerning the existing nuclear fleet and future reactors:
- Drafting chapters for the safety report (RDS);
- Providing advisory support to project teams to implement safety requirements;
- Independent verification of certain significant modifications related to the RDS;
- Validation stages for documents to be submitted to the ASN.
What do you enjoy about your job?
It is truly fascinating to delve deep into a subject, dig for data, understand the origin of safety requirements, and assess the need to evolve them to exactly what is necessary.
What are the challenges you face on a daily basis?
Our job requires understanding where a requirement comes from, how it was defined, and why it was written a certain way 6 months or 15 years ago. It’s a bit like "safety archaeology," which can quickly become time-consuming when trying to track down the reference for a specific document.
Furthermore, safety requirements are quite general and always potentially open to interpretation because they are phrased to cover diverse configurations. If the rules were self-explanatory, we wouldn't be asked for our opinion.
To get the history behind the wording and meaning of our safety requirements, we regularly consult our experts. Their knowledge is invaluable, and they are the ones who hold a great deal of institutional memory. Without them, it is very difficult to trace the origin of these requirements. In other words, we can see the menu (the RDS), but we sometimes struggle to find the recipe!
I think there is still room for improvement in how we capitalize on knowledge. It is important to keep a record of the answers provided. Advisory support is sometimes given via email, which carries the risk that the information may not be fully communicated, preserved over time, or may even become obsolete later on.
What value do you see in Ask EDF?
This tool should help us save time during the research phase. The time saved can be redirected toward analysis and tasks that provide real added value.
The goal is not to replace DT experts with AI. Instead, the goal is for Ask EDF to become our first point of contact whenever we have a question, allowing us to find answers already validated by colleagues across the group regarding DR group responsibility topics.
Securing this knowledge over time is essential for long-term performance and effective knowledge transfer.
