The Guys Who Get it Done at San Onofre

Today's Orange County Register is taking a look at a refueling outage at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

What's different about this profile is that the reporter actually took the time to talk to a pair of employees at the plant:

Bob Ashe-Everest is a supervising engineer in the Nuclear Fuel Services group. Randall Granaas is a refueling engineer. For those months, Bob takes the day shift. Randall works at night. It's imperative that someone from their group be on hand as the delicate dance – offloading spent fuel, uploading fresh fuel – unfolds.

[...]

Ashe-Everest has worked at San Onofre for 31 years. Married, two kids, lives in Laguna Hills, is on the city traffic commission. Likes to go boating. Is team captain for the Orange County-to-San Diego bike race that benefits the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Is handy under the hood of a car.

Granaas has worked here for 16 years. Married, lives in Dana Point, joined the Navy with the express desire of becoming a nuclear engineer. Loves to travel. Is planning a trip to China. Very handy with computers. He and Ashe-Everest have a mutual aid agreement: Ashe-Everest helps Granaas fix his cars, and Granaas helps Ashe-Everest with his home computer headaches.

Nuclear power is not a mystery to them, not an enigma, not a boogeyman. It's what they do.

Sounds a lot like the folks in NEI's Nuc Gen group that I work with every day. I wish more people could get a chance to get to know nuclear workers like Ashe-Everest and Granaas, and understand the kind of skill and dedication they bring to the job.

Comments

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog