NEI Nuclear Notes

Lisa Hilbert The following post was sent to us by Dominion’s Lisa Hilbert for NEI’s Powered by Our People promotion. Powered by Our People is part of the Future of Energy campaign that NEI launched earlier this year .  This promotion aims to communicate innovation in our nation’s nuclear facilities in the voices of the people working at them.  For more on this promotion, take a look at the featured content on our website and follow the #futureofenergy tag across our digital channels. Lisa Hilbert has worked in the nuclear energy industry for 24 years. She is currently the manager for nuclear outages and planning at Dominion’s Surry nuclear power station 17 miles from Newport News, Va. She began her career in the company’s mechanical engineering department, and held positions in operations, corrective action and nuclear oversight before joining the company’s Outage & Planning team. What I do and why I enjoy doing it Outage & Planning coordinates the pr...

Carrington Dillon at Clean Energy Insight wrote a very informative piece on the answer . In the nuclear power industry, an “outage” does not primarily refer to a power outage or blackout. Every Spring and Fall, when power demand is at its lowest, the nuclear industry shuts down some of their plants for maintenance and repair. This could mean packing up and going to a nuclear power plant for the next three months, or staying at their home office and working the night shift. We will try our best to keep you updated on nuclear news and interesting nuclear power facts [while we're away tending to outages]. However, all of our focus will be on our work in order to be as safe as possible and as productive as possible during these critical outages. Plus, working on an outage can help an engineer gain priceless experience in the field and in the industry, which will make Clean Energy Insight better equipped to bring you voices of experience. Be sure to check out the rest, pictures and ...