NEI Nuclear Notes

Danny Bost The following is a guest blog post by Danny Bost, Executive Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer for Southern Nuclear. If you’re reading this blog, it’s pretty safe to say that you’re a proponent of safe, clean, reliable and affordable energy. As the Chief Nuclear Officer for Southern Nuclear, it’s my job to ensure that our six operating units deliver exactly that to our customers across the Southeast. I think we do that pretty well, but as a learning culture, we’re always looking for performance improvements. That’s why we are excited about the opportunity for Plant Vogtle to pilot the application of NRC Rule 10CFR50.69 “Risk-informed Categorization and Treatment of Structures, Systems and Components (SSCs) in Nuclear Power Plants,” a voluntary rule published in 2004. Since probabilistic risk assessments were first undertaken in the 1980s, plants have continued to use those studies to identify key potential safety improvements. As these improvements have been ...

Ken Byrd As director of engineering at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant , I’m privileged to be part of a workforce of professionals who recognize their responsibility for upholding safety and make it a priority every day. The U.S. nuclear industry is one of the safest industries in the world, due to close regulation by federal authorities, highly trained and experienced professionals, and a vigorous “safety-in-depth” philosophy applied to the design and construction of our facilities. But perhaps the defining characteristic of the nuclear industry is a culture that puts safety above all else in everything we do. Our industry is guided by a set of 10 principles that outline the traits of a robust nuclear safety culture and remind us each of the important role we play in upholding the health and safety of our communities. When put into practice, the nuclear safety culture principles ensure we are meeting the energy needs of our customers while also protecting the environment,...

The cornerstone of safety in the nuclear industry is safety culture. It's identified as the core values and behaviors resulting from a collective commitment by leaders and individuals to emphasize safety over competing goals, to ensure protection of people and the environment. The nuclear industry is proactive in ensuring nuclear energy facilities have a strong nuclear safety culture. NRC is responsible for providing effective oversight. And the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) promotes high levels of safety and reliability in U.S. nuclear plants by setting performance objectives, criteria, and guidelines industry-wide for nuclear plant operations, and by conducting regular evaluations of nuclear plants. Safety -- and safety culture -- isn't static. Earlier today our friends at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant shared with us this image of a fresh coat of paint adorning a hallway leading to a site turbine building, reminding plant staff of the unwaveri...

I love The Simpsons .  The Simpsons cleverly, mercilessly, and democratically gore everyone's sacred cows.  None are off-limits, including the professionals who comprise the commercial nuclear power industry. What we are not. From the avaricious Montgomery Burns, owner of the Springfield Nuclear Plant, to the bumbling Homer Simpson, control room operator and safety inspector, the people of the nuclear enterprise are portrayed as incompetent and unconcerned about their responsibilities to serve and protect their fellow workers, the public and the environment.  As you can imagine, the truth is quite different. How different from that comedic portrayal are the real people of the nuclear power industry?  A recent briefing by our NEI colleagues, Sue Perkins-Grew and Rod McCullum, reminded us how different indeed. Sue Perkins-Grew in action on the ropes course at SNPM. Sue and Rod recently attended an elite leadership training course offere...

Anthony R. Pietrangelo The following is a guest post from Anthony R. Pietrangelo, NEI's Chief Nuclear Officer. Achieving one great year of performance for an industry or an individual is noteworthy. Sustaining exemplary performance over a decade or more is the true measure of excellence. The U.S. nuclear energy industry’s long-term performance is documented by the performance indicators  monitored by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO). Why are these indicators so important? They are used as a management tool by nuclear operators to monitor their performance and progress against their peers, to set ambitious goals for improvement, and to benchmark the best practices of operators worldwide. According to the 2014 industry performance indicators , U.S. nuclear energy facilities set or approached record levels of performance in many categories. Nuclear power plants have multiple safety systems which, if e...

The following guest post comes from Victoria Anderson, senior project manager for risk assessment at NEI. Since the NRC published the Probabilistic Risk Assessment Policy Statement in 1995, both the industry and NRC have worked to use risk information to better focus implementation of regulations at our country’s nuclear reactors. Risk information has helped advance maintenance efforts, routine inspections and testing procedures to ensure that licensees direct resources to the equipment and practices that are most important to safe, reliable operation of their plants. In one such effort, in 2004, the NRC published a voluntary rule – 10 CFR 50.69 , Risk-informed categorization and treatment of structures, systems and components for nuclear power reactors – that would allow licensees to refocus their equipment special treatment requirements on the structures, systems and components that are the most important to protecting the plant. Specifically, licensees implementing this volunta...

The Associated Press yesterday ran a sensationalized account of an internal Nuclear Regulatory Commission dispute over the seismic safety of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. It actually wasn't much of a dispute insomuch as one NRC voice advocated to have Diablo Canyon shut down until additional seismic testing of the site could be conducted, while the larger regulatory body over many years has exhaustively analyzed seismic threats at Diablo Canyon,  always concluding that the site is safe .    Diablo Canyon Power Plant Federal regulations require that nuclear plants be able to withstand extreme natural events that may occur in the region where they are located, and the NRC most recently required that nuclear utilities have seismic experts re-evaluate the potential earthquake impact at their sites using the latest available data and methodologies. But earlier this year the NRC reminded the pub...

On February 9, the Commissioners held a briefing on the status of implementation of the NRC's Safety Culture Policy Statement (an archived webcast of the briefing is available here ). In a nearly three-hour briefing, the Commissioners heard from a panel of industry and public stakeholders and a panel of NRC program managers. In the first panel, NEI's Janet Schlueter spoke for the community of fuel cycle facilities; Lee Cox spoke for the Organization of Agreement States and the interests of the state regulators who are employing the SCPS with the radioactive materials users licensed by Agreement States. Ed Halpin, President and CEO of South Texas Nuclear Operating Company , spoke about his experience in cultural transformation at STP and his passion in the pursuit of a healthy and robust safety culture. Attorney Billie Garde , long-time advocate for employee concerns, provided her perspective on the NRC's success with the SCPS and the work that she sees as the next ste...

Like the United States, India wants to take a look at the relative safety of its nuclear plants. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has set up a 10-member committee to examine if our 20 nuclear plants can withstand earthquakes and other external events such as tsunamis, cyclones, floods, etc. That includes checking if the arrangements are adequate to ensure safety in case of such events, both within and beyond the design. The panel is chaired by AERB’s former chairman, S K Sharma. Its first meeting is on the coming Thursday. Naturally, the focus will be on earthquakes and tsunamis: He [an unidentified board member] said during the 2004 tsunami, nuclear plants in south India were able to withstand the effects. “Our plants are almost 2,000 km away from the tectonic boundary of Sumatra. The earthquake following the tsunami in Japan was quite unprecedented and, therefore, the committee will revisit the safety applications installed in our plants.” This is a wor...

Last week the PBS series Frontline took on the safety culture of BP. Although titled, " The Spill ", and ostensibly focused on the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the 54 minute expose dwelt almost entirely on the history of significant events at BP's mainland American facilities. Using bits of the backstory on the 2006 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery which killed 15 people, a 2006 leak from an Alaskan pipeline that spilled more than 206,000 gallons of oil, and the 2007 swamping of the Thunderhorse oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, Frontline portrays BP as taking risks other companies thought unreasonable and putting cost-cutting ahead of safety. Frontline makes it appear that Deepwater Horizon was the inevitable result of putting production before safety. Some online comments about the Frontline documentary question the balance and accuracy of the presentation. We'll leave that to others to decide, but take the appearance of the Frontline docum...