NEI Nuclear Notes

Bill Webster This week is the fifth anniversary of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant . To mark the event, we'll be sharing observations from leaders around the nuclear energy industry all week long on how the U.S. has absorbed lessons learned from the accident to make safe nuclear plants even safer . Today's contribution comes from Bill Webster, Executive Vice President, Industry Strategy for the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations . U.S. nuclear stations continue to perform at high levels of safety and reliability, as measured by internationally accepted measures of performance. Most notably, as we approached the end of 2015, industry median values for capability factor, forced loss rate, reactor scrams, collective radiation exposure and industrial safety reflect the best-ever performance of America’s nuclear energy industry and exceed the challenging five-year goals set for these indicators in 2010. Early in the response to the accident at Fukus...

Chris Earls The following is a guest blog post by NEI’s Chris Earls, who helped load the fuel before the startup of Watts Bar 1 . Last Friday, employees of Tennessee Valley Authority ’s (TVA) Watts Bar Nuclear Plant started loading the first of 193 new fuel assemblies into its Unit 2 reactor. This action marked the first, initial core load of a commercial nuclear reactor in the U.S. in nearly two decades. When I heard this exciting news, I couldn’t help but recall some happy memories from earlier in my career when I worked on Watts Bar Unit 1. The fuel load and startup of Watts Bar Unit 2 is a very important milestone for TVA and the nuclear industry. I was working at TVA in the late 1980’s when the startup of Watts Bar Unit 1 was one of our focus areas. In looking back, it amazes me how much work was entailed in getting the plant ready for operation. I was fortunate enough to return in the early ‘90s as a member of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) team that c...

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...

While the U.S.-Japan CNO Summit has ended and the American delegation has returned home, we're still seeing reports come in from their time in Japan. The latest is this video diary from Peter Sena, President and Chief Nuclear Officer of First Energy . In this video vignette, Sena reflect on the lessons he learned after visiting Fukushima Daiichi and meeting face to face with TEPCO employees who are working to clean up the site: As always, please keep up to date with the latest content by following #CNOSummit on Twitter.

Maria Korsnick Constellation Energy Chief Nuclear Officer Maria Korsnick was in Japan last week touring the country’s nuclear facilities with a prominent group of U.S. chief nuclear officers.  This is the second in a series of travel logs that Maria recorded. You can read an earlier diary entry from Maria, here . Additional coverage of the CNO Summit is on Twitter at #CNOSummit . Earlier this week I toured Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini. The stations are only 7.5 miles apart but the contrast is remarkable. When approaching Daiichi, we were stopped at a village 12 miles from the station. The area was previously used as a training facility for Japan's soccer team, but today it serves as temporary housing for site workers and a plant access checkpoint. Each of us received a whole body count before boarding a bus to Daiichi. The view from the bus window will stay with me forever. It looked like a war zone. The earthquake and the force of the tsunami were evident ever...

Ed Halpin, SVP & CNO of PG&E Ed Halpin, Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer at PG&E , was in Japan this week with virtually all of his American colleagues as part of the U.S.-Japan CNO Summit. He shared this diary entry with us after reflecting on what he saw at Fukushima Daiichi earlier this week. Be sure to follow all the updates from Japan on Twitter using the #CNOSummit hash tag. As nuclear operators, we have earned a special trust from the communities we serve. My time here reaffirms my belief that the U.S. nuclear industry must always maintain its strong focus on safe operations, intensive training programs, effective peer-review processes, and the continued sharing of lessons-learned across the nation and throughout the world. The U.S. industry has always relied on redundant layers of safety in operating its facilities and is making exceptional gains in implementing a program known as " FLEX " to further enhance safety in the face of ex...

Editor's Note: For the past week, NEI's John Keeley has been accompanying a delegation of American chief nuclear officers on a tour of Japan. This is his last blog entry he'll make before returning home to the U.S.  To find all of the content related to this week's trip from NEI Nuclear Notes, click here . And for all of the chatter about the trip on Twitter, check out the #CNOSummit hash tag. Thanks to John for a job well done.  (Tokyo, September 13) I won't miss jet-lag-induced risings at 3 a.m.each and every day -- and apparently I was joined in those by each and every American chief nuclear officer and communicator -- but just about everything else on this trip created a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. So I thought I'd share those moments that stood out most to me:  At every formal engagement between U.S. and Japanese nuclear officers this week our hosts started the proceedings with a formal apology "for the concern and difficulty and conf...

At one point Wednesday, while within a few hundred yards of the three melted down reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, I was outfitted in three layers of gloves (two rubber, one cotton), plastic covers over my shoes, a very hot and very insulating Tyvek jumpsuit, and a respirator mask. The interior of our tour bus was fantastically shielded in plastic, and when, while maneuvering on a road between the ocean that sent the monstrous March 2011 tsunami and Daiichi's turbine buildings, our driver dramatically increased our speed as we arrived in front of unit 3, where the dose rate was highest on the site, to limit our exposure. Storefront in an abandoned village. All week the chief nuclear officers on this trip have regularly referenced their collective need to experience, first-hand, conditions in Japan that all but only a few have only read about. Our bus' movements, and our in-person engagements with shift managers and control room operators on duty the afternoon of March 11, ...

The past two days in Japan, U.S. chief nuclear officers have toured Fukushima Daini and Daiichi, and with respect to the latter, left the experience appreciably changed. We've made a point each day of inviting the CNOs to the very back of our tour bus and asking them to share their experiences on camera with us. It's true that every CNO we spoke with identified the Daiichi visit as life-altering, but no reaction seemed better representative of the CNOs than that of Jeff Forbes , Executive Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer for Entergy Nuclear . Just watch. Please remember to follow our updates on Twitter using the #CNOSummit hash tag.

Maria Korsnick Maria Korsnick is Chief Nuclear Offiicer (CNO) of Constellation Energy . In the aftermath of Fukushima, Maria appeared in a series of videos for NEI explaining exactly what changes the industry was effecting in the wake of Fukushima .  She's in Japan this week as part of a delegation of American CNOs touring the country’s nuclear facilities as part of the U.S.-Japan CNO Summit. This is the first in a series of travel logs that Maria recorded to share her experiences. Please remember to follow our updates on Twitter using the #CNOSummit hash tag. As I boarded the plane for Japan, I wondered what it was going to be like to experience our business in a completely different culture. Once I arrived, it didn’t take long to generate some first impressions. My hosts were welcoming and polite, surroundings were neat and orderly and properties were well-cared for. It’s abundantly clear that the Japanese people take pride in their surroundings. Japan has only one-thi...

The following post was sent to us via email by John Keeley, who is travelling with a delegation of American chief nuclear officers in Japan this week. You can follow John's observations on Twitter by following @nei_media and the #CNOSummit hash tag. In summer, in morning or early afternoon, when a traveler moves by air many thousands of miles from east to west, he never quite escapes the bright sun of day. My communicator colleagues here in Japan all noted the difficulty we had securing substantive rest on our flights over the Pacific during this novel journey. We were ever chasing the sun, they said. The American chief nuclear officers we're following with our cameras and electronica this week have been, ever since their arrival here, in perpetual motion in pursuit of safety lessons. In making the unprecedented and extraordinary commitment to "put eyes on the problem" created by the 3/11 Fukushima tragedy, our CNOs, it occurs to me, are following a global commit...

Following on John Keeley's message from earlier this morning , here's the first video message we've received out of Japan regarding the #CNOSummit that's taking place there this week. It's from Randy Edington, Executive Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer of Arizona Public Service . Though the video is intended for Randy's team back in Arizona, we think the message about the trip is universal: Look for more content from the #CNOSummit all week both here at NEI Nuclear Notes and on Twitter.

Often, I travel most modestly on behalf of the U.S. nuclear industry -- like say up and back to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for public meetings, some 7 miles from NEI's offices in Northwest Washington. But about a month ago, as word began circulating in the office about a sizable contingent (almost all) of our nation's chief nuclear officers traveling to Japan to meet with their Japanese CNO counterparts, NEI communications leadership saw a clear role to try and capture the historic visit in words and images. And tweets, of course. My bosses picked me to tag along with the CNOs (almost 30 of them), as a bit of an embedded reporter. I've a daunting task in that regard.  To be sure, this is a historic visit; nothing of its kind has been undertaken before in the history of commercial nuclear operations in the U.S. For the first time, the chief nuclear officers from the U.S. and Japan will meet together to discuss lessons learned from a severe accident: specifically,...

World Nuclear News Has up a story on how the French nuclear energy industry is responding to the accident in Japan: In an accident situation the ASN [Autorité De Sûreté Nucléaire, essentially the French NRC] wants French reactors to be able to rely on what it calls a 'hard core' set of safety requirements. These arrangements would protect safety-critical structures and equipment to ensure that vital functions can be maintained in the face of demands beyond the design basis of the plant, such as earthquakes, fires, or the prolonged loss of power or emergency cooling. Among the 'hard core' set-up would be robust emergency centers, improved communication and hardened supplies of water, diesel generators and dosimetry supplies for workers. The whole story is worth a read, but what struck me is that this sound much like the American industry’s FLEX approach (this is from NEI’s member newsletter): In a series of meetings with NRC staff last week, the industry p...

Talking Points Memo has posted a set of photos at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Reporters were let into the facility for the first time since the earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant. A New York Times story covering the visit cannot really allow much room to acknowledge that progress has been made: The ground around the hulking reactor buildings was littered with mangled trucks, twisted metal beams and broken building frames, left mostly as they were after one of the world’s largest recorded earthquakes started a chain reaction that devastated the region and, to some extent, Japan.  Chain reaction, get it? Ha ha. While no one died in the nuclear accident, the environmental and human costs were clear during the drive to the plant through the 12-mile evacuation zone. It might have been nice to have this higher than the eighth paragraph, but it’s still nice to see – though it would have been more fully accurate to note that the human toll was quite dreadful and t...

In addition to the published INPO timeline , NEI CNO Tony Pietrangelo also recorded a video overview, one that includes a brief look at how American industry is applying the lessons learned from Fukushima to enhancing safety at U.S. plants:

Just a few minutes ago, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations published a detailed timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station following the March 11 earthquake and tsunammi (click here for the PDF of the report). The full text of the Nuclear Energy Institute news release announcing the publication follows below: INPO Compiles Timeline of Fukushima Events After Japan Earthquake, Tsunami 4-Day Chronology Provides Common Baseline of Facts To Inform Response Activities by U.S. Industry, Government WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 11, 2011 —The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations has compiled a detailed timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The detailed report, prepared as part of the integrated response to the Japan events, was delivered today to U.S. industry executives, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and to members of Congress. “The U.S. nuclear energy industry is committed to learn...

The Japanese government has released its report on the Fukushima accident, with the start of a timeline of events, a categorization and presentation of lessons learned, and, I thought, a proposed transformation of its regulatory structure to something far more rigorous (and a lot more like that in this country.) But there’s a lot to absorb here. Take a read and we’ll return to it in the days ahead. The report will be presented at IAEA’s Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety on June 20. --- The US House Science Committee in a report on Wednesday blasted the Obama administration for terminating the long-planned Yucca Mountain national nuclear-waste repository with no scientific or technical justification. The criticism is the latest to come from the Republican-led House, and is largely a reiteration of complaints heard from a House energy oversight committee last week. That’s from Platts and they’re right – Congress has had a lot to say about Yucca Mountain lately. H...

NEI hosted its annual Nuclear Energy Assembly in Washington DC Tuesday and Wednesday with a solid lineup of speakers and plenty of opportunities for attendees to catch up with colleagues and industry pals. Let’s consider the latter analog social media and leave it at that. The speakers represented a topflight assemblage of industry, government and regulatory figures. Happily, none tried “the future is bright for nuclear energy” approach you might reasonably expect at an industry meeting. Everyone looked at the year and years ahead through clear eyes. Here’s a bit of what they had to say: NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko expressed the continued confidence of his agency in the safety of U.S. nuclear energy facilities. “The commission remains confident in the programs of the NRC and in the safety of the nation’s nuclear power plants,” he said, noting that in 2010 “there were no statistically significant adverse trends in industry performance.” Still, Jaczko warned the gathere...