Knowledge Management (KM) in Radioactive Waste Management (RWM)

KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets 1.
Implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) is an important issue for all types of nuclear organizations and in particular for Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) organizations. Thus, the fundamental objective of RWM is to manage the radioactive waste without adverse impact for human health and the environment during its radioactive waste lifetime. Considering the life cycle of the radioactive waste it is obvious that KM accompanies Safety Management (SM). The management of radioactive waste affects future generations and covers pretreatment, treatment, conditioning, storage and disposal. At all mentioned stages operators are dealing with information such as take the records, use the standards & templates, prepare the reports. Without adequate knowledge it would be impossible to carry out this work and conclusively safety will be under risk. It is clear, that managing the knowledge must be implemented at all stages of RWM with the integration of knowledge processes concentrating on the following four core activities:

• To generate the knowledge
• To store the knowledge
• To share the knowledge
• To distribute the knowledge

• Information and Document Management
• Human Resource Management
• Knowledge Organizational Structure

However, depending on the organization (Regulatory, Operations, R&D organizations) involved in RWM the used KM methods & tools will be different. Nuclear R&D organizations can be categorized into seven types oriented on types of functions undertaken by the respective organization. In 2012 IAEA2 has classified them as follows: (1.) Basic research functions, (2.) Applied research functions, (3.) Design R&D functions, (4.) Functions utilizing nuclear R&D facilities, (5.) Functions utilizing non-nuclear R&D facilities, (6.) Educational R&D functions and (7.) Technical support & service functions.
Referring to R&D functions it becomes obvious that out of seven known Knowledge levels3 R&D organizations mainly use four (i.e. Organizational memory, Knowledge in Processes, Knowledge in Products & Services and Knowledge in People). An example for this is the KM initiatives in the Institute of Resource Ecology.
The Institute of Resource Ecology is one of eight institutes of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) where many administrative tasks are centralized. For example the human resources (HR) department, the financial department, the international department and the IT department are all administrated centrally by the HZDR. The HZDR has an internal platform which is used for administrative work, data & information management, communication and keeps employees updated with ongoing and upcoming activities in their institutes. Beside this platform, HZDR employees use different IT tools, e.g. Outlook, Mattemost, etc, for close cooperation. The employees skill development program is administrated by the center. This program follows the requirements collected from all HZDR employees.
Continuous education and training programs for the HZDR employees and students, well organized in cooperation with partner organizations (TU-Dresden etc) do also support the knowledge capturing & sharing process.
The centralized library has more than 40.000 books in hard copy and 16.300 e-books & journals and all are available for employees of the center. The repository of HZDR’s publications has more than 36.000 scientific papers. In addition, each institute has also an internal scientific database for employee’s needs.
There are several formats of information and knowledge exchange in the Institute. To convince the employees of the importance of knowledge-sharing the institute provides series of different workshops regularly e.g. monthly seminars, workshops, department meetings, strategy and jour-fixe meetings in hybrid formats.
Obviously, the critical knowledge in the institute is linked to research works. The critical knowledge here is defined as knowledge which is needed to meet the objectives of the Institute. The critical knowledge holders are well known. There are several practices applied in the institute for maintaining the knowledge and transfer it. First of all to mention here is the supervision & mentoring program for the PhD students by critical knowledge holders. Another one is the procedure for uploading publications and records to the internal repository. There are also two inhouse scientific databases at the IRE available for internal and external users: (1.) RES³T - Rossendorf Expert System for Surface and Sorption Thermodynamics and database and (2.) the Thermodynamic Reference Database (THEREDA). However, there is still a high demand for the development of Knowledge Preservation programs. The loss of knowledge in association with the retirement of knowledge holders is still an issue in the institute. This is true for all nuclear organizations.
Different approaches have been used in industry. As an example, the approach applied by the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE) is described.
Due to the restructuring of the nuclear waste-management landscape in Germany, BGE is since 2017 the national competence centre in Germany and responsible for the disposal of radioactive waste.
For many decades, Research &Developement-work for this subject has been performed in Germany with an enormous stock of knowledge (topical and quantitative), but an overview is impaired due to the diffuse and local organisation of knowledge of the nuclear waste-management landscape.
Research reports for example can be found in many archives, but no archive is complete and „Old stock of knowledge“(old documents, grey literature) has to be embedded in the new stock of knowledge.
At the same time the imminent loss of expertise due to phasing out of nuclear energy production and mining in Germany must be considered as a limiting and partially critical factor, especially while reflecting the age structure of the BGE-staff and the restart of the new site selection procedure for disposal of highly radioactive waste products.
Facing these prerequisites the newly formed internal department for knowledge management (KM) of the BGE is establishing an infrastructure for KM and generates a connection between KM platforms and knowledge holders in the company to make explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge available.
The approach for the explicit knowledge is the provision of a digital information basis, into which current results from research and development are entered as a knowledge store. This knowledge store currently consists of more than 16.000 documents, mainly research reports and scientific publications, which are concerned with diverse topics for the final disposal of radioactive waste.
The total stock of available internal company documents can be accessed with a browser-based text analysis software. Intelligent search algorithms render the textual contents accessible, combine them with synonyms and dictionaries deposited in the system and make the resulting hits of the search queries available for the user in order of importance in summarized and full text versions.
Using specific query terms the software analyzes the available documents of the digital information basis and provides a brief description of the contents, the naming of relevant keywords, the identification of sources, compilers, institutions, knowledge carriers and an extended optimized information analysis of hits, as well as the possibility to access the complete document. The search options can be combined with established internet search engines as well as with queries of incorporated information or databank catalogue of national and international scientific institutions or libraries, which are concerned with research programs relevant for repositories4. The content volume of the digital information basis, as well as the amount of externally connected research sources is permanently growing.
To further increase and optimize the information possibilities for employees of the BGE and to make implicit knowledge partly available, a variety of general and demand-oriented interactive knowledge maps have been and will be implemented in the intranet, which enable specific queries on topics, expert information, etc.
To capture the tacit knowledge of persons who are leaving the company due to retirement, concerted concepts, e.g. interviews including transcriptions are used to make this individual knowledge available to the BGE-staff using the BGE internal tools for capturing and distributing implicit and explicit knowledge.
Additional actions contain, e.g. the initiation and organisation of technical and professional talks on various topics and to establish them as a permanent and important exchange possibility in the company.
While “How to use” seminars for the use of the broser-based text analysis software are already established and a permanent and reoccurring part in the company, further seminars and videos with “How to use” approach e.g. for demand-oriented interactice knowledge maps are in the implementations process as well as a Podcast series about Knowledge Management in the BGE.
For the further development of person-related and further group-related knowledge, the BGE Knowledge Management group/department is compiling concepts, which can only be implemented together with the employee in the company and its own guiding principles as they border on certain interfaces in the organization/company, taking into account that all measures to share and distribute knowledge can only be a permanent success if it is voluntarily process without compulsion.
By writing this paper we tried to illustrate the practical difference between KM initiatives in R&D and industry. However, the overlapping of the approaches at some certain stages are visible. The information management has been considered as an essential part of the knowledge management in both of organizations. The capture of the critical knowledge in both organizations remains a main issue even if the selected methods are different. The coaching & mentoring program which are well implemented at the IRE (HZDR), are may be difficult to realize/accomplish at the BGE. However, the pilot coaching program is planned at the BGE, but currently not available due to the “young” founding date in 2017. One of the main concerns of the BGE as an implementer, is the motivation and encouragement of all employees to share and distribute their knowledge and benefit from each other.

Reference:

1. SANTOSUS, MEGAN, and SURMACZ, The ABCs of Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management Research Center, accessed on 09 December 2005 at http://www.cio.com/research/knowledge/edit/kmabcs.html. )
2. IAEA, Knowledge Management for nuclear Research and Development organizations IAEA, Vienna, 2012
3. Jatinder N.D. Gupta, Sushil K. Sharma, Jeffrey Hsu, “An overview of Knowledge Management”, Knowledge management. I. Jennex, Murray E., 1956
4. Gunnar Hoefer, Sebastian Wanka, Peter L. Wellmann, Knowledge Management in the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal (BGE), Saf. Nucl. Waste Disposal, 1, 251–253, 2021