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Gimbaled Head...Continued from page 58Excellence in...Continued from page 52The Nuclear...Continued from page 35impressive as this was, the team pushedfor more improvement. In between the2007 and 2009 outage, the ICI innovationwas deployed to work in concert with theCRDM gimbaled head.The overall outage time in 2009went from the baseline of 150 hours to109 total hours for both the CRDMs andICI inspections using the standard twoSUMO-Rocky setup.With some continued improvement,the Palisades and AREVA team believesthey can go to sub-100 hours in 2010 onthe total inspection.Innovation requires persistence.This team had the persistence and followthrough to design, test, re-design,re-test and then to apply a new solutionfor this difficult and critical inspection.The gimbaled head has performed exceedinglywell and is important to Palisadesduring this interim period prior toreactor head replacement. AREVA teammembers took the gimbaled head andSumo-Rocky bottom-up delivery systemto Davis-Besse where it was used duringtheir inspection and repair activities intheir recent outage. Again, the innovationworked to perfection.“We are confident in the performanceof the gimbaled head device andknow that it contributes to the overall successof outage performance and safety,”concluded Chad Main, project managerand team lead for the Entergy Palisadesgimbaled head effort.Contact: Margie Jepson, EntergyNuclear; 1340 Echelon Parkway, Jackson,MS 39213; telephone: (601) 368-5460,email: mjepson@entergy.com. Errata:The following text was left out of theMay-June 2010 article "New GenerationShielding"Jim Bacquet, ANO radiation protectionsupervisor, and the ANO radiationprotection team drove the development ofthis novel method to safely and quickly attacha flexible tungsten shield to varioussizes of pipes and surfaces.4. How can the nuclear power industrymotivate engineers and technicians fromother industries to reorient their careerand training to become competent for thenuclear power industry?The National Skills Academy forNuclear has a key role in this area in theUK, we have worked with the SectorSkills Council – Cogent to carry out indepth research into the current and futureskills needs of the nuclear industry. Thereports published by Cogent clearlydemonstrate the workforce requirementsfor the sector up to 2,025. This clarity offuture requirements clearly demonstratesthe many exciting and interestingopportunities in the sector thus attractingentrants from other sectors to consider afuture in the nuclear industry. The SkillsAcademy has also developed “The Awardfor Nuclear Industry Awareness”, thisprogramme is specifically designed fornew entrants to the sector and is idealfor those transferring in from otherindustries giving them a breadth andunderstanding of the nuclear industryincluding: Conventional and NuclearSafety, Operations, Waste Management,Security Requirements and History. Ane learning version of this programme isavailable visit www.nuclear.nsacademy.co.ukContact: Jean Llewellyn, NationalSkills Academy for Nuclear; 9 EuropeWay, Cockermouth, Cumbria, UnitedKingdom, CA13 ORJ; telephone:01900898120, fax: 01900 898129, email:j.llewellyn@nuclear.nsacademy.co.uk. www.NuclearPlantJournal.comthere has been a continual movement toimprove and enhance security and safetyin a variety of areas. There are some issueswhich have been long standing and needto come to a final resolution. ChairmanJaczko talked about fire protection and Idon’t think any reasonable person woulddisagree that the fire protection issueneeds to be put to bed. GSI 191 is onearea where I think everyone would liketo get behind us. That said, I do remainconcerned that there is very large list ofactivities that NRC is ratcheting up itsrequirements on the utilities and I thinkit causes a possibility for regulatorystress. There are almost too many thingsfor utilities to grapple and deal with atone time and I think one of the things theagency has previously been quite carefulabout - during the time I was on theCommission - was making sure that theyare not placing so many requirements onutilities that it undermines the ability ofthe utilities to succeed in accomplishingthose things that are truly important.If folks think that fire protection andGSI 191 and security are the top priorities,then fine. The NRC needs to take a lookat those issues in an integrated way andreally send out some signals that these arethe areas that need to get completed first.Otherwise you water down the abilityof the utilities to successfully completethese regulatory changes because youare forcing them to have to chase toomany things at one time. The challengethat the agency has is that they have avery dedicated staff, some who are veryspecialized – fire protection, security,emergency planning, among others –and individuals in these groups becomeso over focused on their sub issues theysometimes fail to grasp how this affectslicensees in the big picture. I believe it isthe duty of the Commission and its seniormanagers to grasp the overall big pictureof these issues and direct the staff to focuson those that are most meaningful from arisk management standpoint. In my view,we need to get back to a point where wecan have a transparent understanding ofwhat are the clear priorities of the agency,68 www.NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2010
understand how these are prioritized andwork together to accomplish the mostimportant safety outcomes so that wedon’t put too much stress on the utilities inachieving success. I think that big pictureneeds to be refocused by the agency –most notably the Commission.6. In the nuclear renaissance, is theindustry doing a good job of educatingthe public about nuclear energy?How do you communicate some ofthese issues and how does the industryreach out to the public in terms ofhelping them understand what’s goingon with the nuclear power? I thinkthat’s a complicated issue. Obviouslythe Nuclear Energy Institute is the focalpoint for communications with thepublic on behalf of the utilities. NEI is,however, very focused on an internal– inside the Beltway - WashingtonD.C. based strategy. I think all of theiractivities from a print media standpointare directed to magazines and periodicalsthat are focused on a congressional andexecutive branch audience. Like manyof us, they are moving toward a greateruse of different types of social media,whether it’s Twitter or Facebook,, toreach a broader audience, including thosein Congress. But I think NEI has not hadreally as much focus on trying to reachthe public as a whole.Today, it falls to the individualutilities to carry the message of thebenefits of nuclear power to a largeraudience. Interacting with consumersin their own service territories, havingadvertisements regarding nuclear powerthat would focus on the utility customersin any given utility and trying to raisethe profile of how nuclear power playsan impact on the electricity that comesthrough the wall is typically undertakenby individual companies. When you lookat some of the polling data, you havearound 60%-70% of the people whoare supportive of building new nucleargenerating plants. Yet, when you breakthose statistics down you find that thereis a 15 to 20 percent drop off in thatlevel of support from men to women. Ithink it’s a classic example of a view anda perception that will not be able to bechanged unless this industry changes itsway of doing business in trying to reachout to women in an integrated and holisticway. Unfortunately, I think it is very hardfor utilities to conduct this on their ownwithout a coordinated approach. I thinkit is going to require a lot more creativityand I think it will require going beyondan “inside the beltway” approach to makethat all happen. Frankly, now is the timeto have that discussion. When you seeperiodicals like Wired Magazine, PopularMechanics, Wall Street Journal andothers who are really picking up on thenew elements of the nuclear renaissance,there are some terrific opportunities toreach and influence a wider audience fornuclear power.7. Why do you believe the perceptionof the public about nuclear power haschanged in the last 20 years?First of all, nuclear power has operatedwith an extraordinary level of safety andhigh capacity factors. However, I thinkthat there are two significant factors thathave been overlooked in how the public’sperception has changed: the internetand the NRC’s revised reactor oversightprocess . Dating back to the late 1990’s,before the widespread use of the Internetas a communications tool, most folksread about nuclear power plants throughtheir local newspaper. It used to be thatwhen we had the old reactor oversightprocess with the watch list, you had avery deterministic and non predictableinspection program that involved the useof a significant number of small fines andpenalties. When these low level penaltieswere issued, the information made itsway to local newspapers and resultedin frequent and critical comments aboutreactors many times out of proportion totheir actual risk significance.With the advent of the revised reactoroversight process and the deployment ofthe performance indicators on the webon a quarterly basis, you now had thecreation of a tool where reporters andthe public could have direct access toonline information about the plants. Thisprovided them with a much more accuratereflection on how the plants were actuallyoperated. Prior to that time, reportershad to rely more heavily on local publicinterest groups to translate for them howthe plants were operating. So maybe theywent to members of the environmentalcommunity who were against the plantsand they got a very negative view. TheNRC also eliminated the use of level fourviolations with a penalty. All of a sudden,thousands of violations which previouslythe NRC reported to the newspaperswent off the radar screen and becamenon cited violations. Thus, a lot of thatnegative chatter, much of it had no risksignificance, was no longer fodder for astory in the local paper. What I began tosee when I was still on the Commissionis the clipping services that we wouldsubscribe to had a noticeable change inthe way plant performance was beingreported. Reporters now had access to theNRC web site and performance indicators,and the stories they were writing reflecteda more accurate impression of how theplants were operating. Because there hasbeen such a high level of safe operationsthe stories written about nuclear powerplants have been much more positive andthat in turn has changed the perception ofthe public. I sometimes think that thosecommon sense changes that I supportedand which were adopted in the late 90'shave not been fully recognized for themeaningful impact they have had on howa typical member of the public determinestheir impression regarding the US nuclearprogram. Either way, in the end, what isimportant is that the plants are operatingsafely, and public sentiment is nowaligned with those safe operations.Contact: Gentry Grann, The ShawGroup; 4171Essen Lane, Baltimore,MD 21202; telephone: (225) 987-7372,email: gentry.brann@shawgrp.com. Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2010 www.NuclearPlantJournal.com 69
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