Nuclear Plant Journal Outage Management ... - Digital Versions

Prioritizing Safety, Quality, &
Schedule
By Tom Sharkey, Dominion.
1. Which of Dominion’s plants has
minimum refueling outage period? Please
describe about Dominion’s strategies
which have resulted in this minimal
refueling outage accomplishments.
Our primary focus above all else during
our refueling outages is to protect the
reactor cores. It is our industry’s unique
and ultimate responsibility. During a
plant’s refueling outage, we remove two
of the three primary barriers between the
nuclear fuel and the outside atmosphere,
the reactor vessel head and usually
the containment equipment hatch. Our
staff clearly plans and focuses on these
planned conditions especially with the
addition of several hundred supplemental
workers on our sites, many without previous
nuclear experience. Our ability to
prepare and execute an efficient refueling
outage duration allows us to best manage
the risks involved.
The plant staffs are focused on outage
preparations by our leaders and processes.
The Chief Nuclear Officer establishes
the importance of successful outage
preparations by being involved in the two
executive outage readiness reviews for
each plant. Station leaders use weekly
outage management meetings, challenge
reviews, High Impact Teams, project
teams to ensure the staff is engaged.
Outage scope and milestones are
critical. Scope determines the outage
duration. Milestones met on time and
accurately are the best outage preparation.
Our two Virginia nuclear stations have
had seen successful durations in their
last refueling outages. North Anna just
completed a 25 day spring 2009 outage
that included a 10 year reactor vessel ISI
inspection. Surry station’s last outage
was 24 days. Selecting the proper outage
scope is the key factor in determining the
outage duration. Just-In-Time review of
scheduled preventative maintenance by
Tom Sharkey
Tom Sharkey is the Dominion Director
of Nuclear Fleet Outage Performance.
He has 31 years of nuclear power
a cross discipline team has helped scope
selection. Another factor is the continuous
outage preparation by the site management
and staff with cross-discipline project
teams and the subsequent challenge board
reviews. Meeting outage milestones
on time in a quality manner forces the
organization to be ready. From industry
benchmarking, we instituted corporate
executive outage readiness reviews at
6 months and 2 months prior to the
outage in order to ensure the station staff
maintains a focus on outage preparations.
leadership experience beginning with
fi ve years in the U.S. Navy, followed
by three years as a shift test engineer
at a submarine shipbuilder, 22 years
at a commercial nuclear power plant
in the areas of Operations, Licensing,
and Engineering, a loaned employee
tour in the areas of maintenance and
work management at the Institute of
Nuclear Power Operations, and a two
year corporate position in nuclear fl eet
integration. He has held a senior reactor
operations license. His degrees include
a BS in Aerospace Engineering from St.
Louis University, and an MS in Nuclear
Engineering from the University of
Missouri. He is a licensed Professional
Engineer in Missouri and Virginia.
The leaders and the Chief Nuclear Office
in particular have made outages a priority.
Proper station oversight of vendor
projects particularly projects that are
unique or first time evolutions are critical
to a successful duration.
2. How are “lessons learned” from
one refueling outage transferred to
implementation of “refueling outage”
of the same plant or another Dominion
plant?
Responses to questions by Newal
Agnihotri, Editor of Nuclear Plant
Journal.
Surry Nuclear Station
24 www.nuclearplantjournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2009