NEI Nuclear Notes

Bob Bement The following is a guest post by Bob Bement, Executive Vice President at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station (PVNGS). Learnings from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March of 2011 are actually impacting U.S. nuclear industry operations today, making a safe fleet even safer . One of the most significant post-Fukushima initiatives was the implementation of Diverse and Flexible Coping Strategies (FLEX), which utilizes reliable portable equipment to provide operators with a powerful tool box for responding to the most extreme situations. The industry has made great strides in improving safety using the portable equipment to protect against events similar to the one at Fukushima, however there is still significant potential for increasing safety in other areas with this equipment. We’re doing just that at Palo Verde today and, with the support of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), it will be done industry-wide. Palo Verde achieved a green ris...

John Keeley Outage management at nuclear power plants over the years has evolved into a sophisticated and meticulously chronicled endeavor, carried out over the course of about 30 days. This month I am being afforded an insider's view of Palo Verde unit 2's outage , and the planning and coordination associated with more than 10,000 jobs being carried out this month within the unit is nothing short of staggering. The work performed during refueling outages is a cornerstone for reliable operations throughout the following operating cycle. The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is perhaps the best-practiced site in outage work across the U.S. nuclear fleet, and for an obvious reason: by virtue of having three units, with staggered outage schedules, they carry off two refueling outages each and every year. Outage management at Palo Verde, to this observer's eyes, is as close to an exact science as is possible in this industry. Nuclear plants e...

Bob Bement The following is a guest post by Bob Bement, Senior Vice President of Site Operations at Palo Verde. Palo Verde has taken the lead for a number of industry initiatives, including the implementation of the Diverse and Flexible Coping Strategies (FLEX), which improves a licensee’s defenses against some of the most extreme external events that a plant could face. Continuing in our lead efforts, we will be among the first plants to adopt Technical Specifications Task Force Traveler 505-A, Risk-informed Completion Times. Implementation of this initiative will allow us to use plant-specific safety analyses to manage equipment outages supporting safe and efficient generation of electricity for a substantial portion of the population in the Southwestern U.S. From the onset of operation of commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S., technical specifications were developed for plants to govern key operational constraints. These constraints include the amount of time that equipme...

NEI's John Keeley In January 2014 NEI made a remarkable investment in my professional development, shipping me out to Arizona for a month so that I could take Plant Systems Training offered by the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Plant Systems, an intensive four-week overview of operations at a pressurized water reactor facility , and a training unique to Palo Verde, is required training for virtually every employee at the site, but its utility and applicability is recognized widely across the industry. I remember studying very hard, passing all of my exams, and at the end of four weeks hugging a lot of new friends I'd made in the class and on the site. At the end of 2014 I told my boss that I didn't want to allow my learnings to atrophy back at my desk in Washington, and suggested to him that I work an outage in 2015. What better place to be embedded in an outage workforce than among my classmates back out at Palo Verde? The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Sta...

So, what’s up in Arizona ? The Senate Committee on Water and Energy narrowly passed SB 1134 , a bill that classifies "nuclear energy from sources fueled by uranium fuel rods that include 80 percent or more of recycled nuclear fuel and natural thorium reactor resources under development" to be a renewable-energy source. That’s pretty specific, since Arizona’s nuclear plant Palo Verde uses neither recycled nuclear fuel or thorium – in fact, no American nuclear plant does. And about labeling nuclear renewable: while it does some of the same things that hydro, solar and wind do, it’s not renewable. Rather, it’s sustainable, meaning that uranium is not depleting at a rate that’s worth worrying about, but it’s not (essentially) infinite, either. It makes sense to consider nuclear energy as part of a “renewable” energy plan, because they are focused on an energy source’s emissions profile, but the semantics can get a little knotty if you let them. Anyway, the specifics o...

I have the fortune of being able to meet and work with plenty of exceptional people in this industry. Randy Edington is one of them. As the executive vice president and chief nuclear officer for the largest nuclear energy facility in America, Edington travels domestically and internationally sharing his passion for our technology. He welcomes the opportunity to convince plant neighbors and nuclear opponents that Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is a safe , clean and reliable source of power—not to mention the nation's largest source of power . Edington knows well the importance of communicating nuclear after logging 33 years in the commercial nuclear energy industry and serving in the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program prior to that. Last week, he shared a career's worth of lessons learned with the communications team at NEI. His presentation is truly remarkable and something to behold in person. I'll do my best to convey the highlights below. Share...

The following post was submitted by John Keeley, NEI's Senior Manager of Media Relations. We posted a video featuring John back on January 10 when he was about to begin a training course at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station on nuclear power plant systems. John completed the course this week and submitted this summary. Against all odds – and certainly counter to any wagers my science instructors from my formal education would have made – I passed Palo Verde’s Plant Systems course this month. Michael Sexton and I shot another video about my odyssey, titled ‘Miracle in the Desert,’ and in it I attempt to articulate how powerfully meaningful success in the course is to me. I’m returning to NEI next week, Plant Systems diploma proudly in hand, and some time Monday morning I hope to walk into the office of my CEO, Marv Fertel , and thank him for making so significant an investment in my professional development. NEI's John Keeley Scott Bell, who led our instruction, is ...

One of our colleagues, NEI's John Keeley, is spending most of the month of January in a classroom at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station attending a training course on nuclear power plant systems. Late last night, he filed this video report from Arizona: Many of our readers will recall that John accompanied a delegation of Chief Nuclear Officers on their historic visit to Japan last year to tour Fukushima Daiichi . We'll have additional updates from John throughout the month about his progress.