Benchmarking
through WANO
By Bill Webster, Institute of Nuclear
Power Operations.
Bill Webster
Bill Webster is executive vice president
of Industry Strategy for the Institute of
Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) in
Atlanta, Georgia.
Mr. Webster joined
INPO in 1982, was
elected executive
vice president in
2013, senior vice
president in 2007,
and vice president in
1998. He has served
INPO as senior
vice president of
Industry Evaluations,
vice president of
Evaluations, vice
president and
director of Plant
Support, manager of
Engineering Support
and Plant Analysis
departments, and assistant manager
for the Emergency Preparedness
Department. He is also an exit
representative that briefs senior
executives of a utility about the results
of a plant evaluation.
He received senior reactor operator
certification at the Brunswick Nuclear
Plant and attended the Executive
Program in Business Administration at
Columbia University. Before joining
INPO, he served in the U.S. Navy and
graduated with a bachelor of science
degree in civil engineering from
Villanova University.
An interview by Newal Agnihotri, Editor
of Nuclear Plant Journal, at Nuclear
Energy Institute’s Nuclear Energy
Assembly in Washington, D.C. on May
14, 2015.
1.
WhathasINPOdonesinceFukushima
to develop a more collaborative approach
to improve safety?
First as an acknowledgment and
a recognition that INPO, NEI, EPRI
and the industry have worked very
closely together to improve the safety
margins at the plants. And we’ve
used a steering committee format with
industry representatives and the various
industry organizations, including the
owners groups, to develop the strategies,
the equipment and the templates to
improve safety at the plants. It has been
a collaborative effort and strong interface
with the NRC, in
terms of the new
rules and orders,
regulations that NRC
has issued, just to
make sure that we
not just comply with
them but really meet
the broad intent of
what’s intended.
I
think,
big
picture, though, what
we have done to
improve the safety
margin of the plant
is that we’ve added a
third layer of defense
in depth. And that
is this diverse and flexible approach,
where we have on-site equipment that’s
available that can be moved and installed,
independent of what an initiating
cause may be, to sustain critical safety
parameters. And then we have built
beyond that an industry support structure,
where we can draw on the two national
response centers, one in Phoenix and one
in Memphis, and also we have a database
at INPO with all the FLEX equipment
and other safety equipment at every site
that can be shared. So it’s not just the
two response centers. It’s also the other
59 sites that have equipment that can be
brought to bear there.
The database has both equipment
resources and it additionally has human
resources. So there are the best people
on severe accident management. We
have the best people on thermodynamics.
We have the best people in terms of
radiological protection. And so, we have
all that collected now. And we would
coordinate that through the industry
response center at the INPO office in
Atlanta and be able to dispatch people to
go to the site or come to Atlanta or come
to NEI and Washington, D.C. depending
upon where the issue is, to help. We’ve
interconnected the sites through an on-
line program so that we can actually
have immediate access to the emergency
response center at that site with INPO in
Atlanta, and also we can connect different
sites together so that we can leverage the
talent. In terms of emergency response
capability, the diverse, flexible equipment
on-site, the industry support structure,
including the response centers and the
other sites coordinated with the Atlanta
industry response center, are probably,
the two biggest things.
The other thing that we have done
is we’ve really worked very hard with
improving the control room crews’
response capability to very complex
transients through the industry’s simulator
training. The industry has worked at
upgrading the training that we use to
train the operators to in the simulator.
The events are more complex, they run
longer periods of time, and they involve
multiple scenarios that can occur at the
sites, so that has also improved the crew
capabilities and proficiencies as well.
Control room crew performance,
FLEX or the diverse flexible response
capability on-site and the industry support
structure are now all being put in place.
In 2013, those were all works in progress,
but we’re now completing all that work,
and we’ll have all the strategies in place
by the end of 2016.
2.
How does the on-line coordination
work?
The industry has an on-line system
of emergency coordination. It basically
tracks all the plants’ status, ongoing
activities, and posts it on a website that
we have access to. The utility uses it to
manage the event in their emergency
response center, but they also can allow
us access to that same program. So
we can see the same information in the
emergency response center at INPO that
the people are seeing at the site, so that
we’re not relying on a lot of phone calls or
distracting the site to obtain information
that we need to determine what sort
of assistance the industry should be
providing. We’re looking at the same
information that the emergency response
organization at the site is looking at.
We also have access to the emergency
data response system that the NRC has.
28
NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2015
