NEI Nuclear Notes

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...

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...

Replacing the old steam generator at Unit 2. Earlier today, Unit 1 at Xcel Energy 's Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station went offline after a record 644-day non-stop run. But in order to match that record or beat it next time, the 550-megawatt reactor will now head into a scheduled refueling outage to make sure the plant is ready to provide power during what is projected to be a harsh winter . To get a better idea of what a refueling outage looks like, you might want to review a photo album we posted online earlier this year with a wide selection of photos from around the industry - including a shot from Prairie Island's Unit 2 when it replaced one of its steam generators . The album was part of a larger package on nuclear reliability that we originally posted over the summer. We also ought to point folks back to an interview we did last November with Curtis Wilson , who tweets under the moniker of the " Nuke Roadie ." In the spring and fall, it's t...

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...

The following is a guest blog post by NEI’s Mitch Singer. Today, tomorrow and Thursday, we’ll be taking a closer look at how nuclear energy facilities function as the backbone of the electric grid, operating at full power when demand is at its highest in summer and winter. Click here to see why nuclear energy’s reliability is unmatched in the electric business. Later, take some time to better understand the value of " Always On Power ," and then see " How Nuclear Power Plants Prep ," for times when demands is at its height. As we enter the height of the summer season when sweltering heat waves challenge utilities to keep pace with hundreds of millions of air conditioners running at full blast, it’s comforting for Americans to know that relief from stifling heat will be there when they need it. The system is so reliable that we take for granted that, when we step inside our homes or workplaces, we’ll be met with a refreshing flow of cool air. Until it isn’t t...

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. This year’s Westinghouse Combustion Engineering Award went to a gargantuan project— NextEra Energy completed the largest extended power uprate project in history, adding more than 700 megawatts of additional generating capacity across four reactors in Florida and two in Wisconsin. With more than 30 million hours worked to complete the uprate, NextEra’s project called on a workforce of thousands, an economic boon to the communities that host the facilities. Terry Jones, vice president of nuclear power uprates, stressed the importance of instilling in the workers the nuclear energy industry’s safety cul...

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. Rachel Doss’ team at Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear energy facility in South Carolina earned the 2013 AREVA Vendor Award, but its project—developing and implementing guidelines for inspecting and evaluating pressurized water reactor internals—was many years in the making. Rather than scheduling reactor internal inspections over multiple refueling outages, Duke’s winning team performed one of the industry’s largest-ever reactor vessel inspections, examining more than 6,500 reactor components during one outage at the Oconee 1 reactor. Its scope required planning with vendors, performing numerous risk ass...

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. Eight-time TIP Award winner Jim Tusar is no stranger to ambitious projects. His most recent, which earned this year’s GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Award, is no exception. The industry standard is to schedule refueling and maintenance outages once every 18 months or two years, but Tusar and his team at Exelon Nuclear pioneered an annual outage schedule at the Clinton Power Station in Illinois. “The idea came from acknowledging the value of [the facility] was decreasing due to the fact we had such high fuel costs, and at the same time power prices were decreasing,” said Tusar, Exelon Nuclear’s manager o...

Tom Kauffman The following is a guest post written by NEI's Tom Kauffman. Though Tom now works in NEI's media relations shop, he spent 23 years working at Three Mile Island , seven of those as a licensed reactor operator.  Ameren 's Callaway Energy Center in Missouri is in a "coastdown." No, it's not rolling to a stop like a skateboard that's missing its rider, it's actually running low on fuel - exactly as planned. Nuclear plant operators shut down their units to refuel the reactor (aka refueling outage) and do a lot of maintenance work every sixteen to twenty-four months depending on the unit's operating cycle. The Callaway reactor is on a year and-a-half operating cycle. The uranium fuel in about a third of the fuel assemblies in the nuclear reactor has been used so those fuel assemblies will be removed for storage . The fuel assemblies have been in the reactor for a few cycles of operation and are now located toward the center of t...