Continuous
Improvement
and
Excellence
By Michael Pacilio, Exelon Generation.
Michael Pacilio
Michael Pacilio is responsible for the
safety, efficiency and reliability of
Exelon Generation’s power generation
fleet, which includes more than 100
generating units in 17 states.
Pacilio has more
than 30 years of
experience with
the company. Most
recently, he was
Exelon Generation’s
chief nuclear officer
and president for
the nuclear division.
In that role, Pacilio
was responsible
for ensuring that
Exelon Generation
maintained high
levels of performance
and safety across
its nuclear fleet of
23 reactors at 14
facilities that it operates in Illinois,
Maryland. Nebraska, New Jersey, New
York and Pennsylvania.
Pacilio holds a bachelor’s degree in
electrical engineering from Purdue
University and a senior reactor operator
certification from Dresden Station.
He completed the Exelon Leadership
Institute Program through the
Northwestern University Kellogg School
of Management and the Advanced
Management Program at Harvard
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
13, 2015.
1.
How do the plant safety and
regulatory burden on the plants
complement each other?
There’s a two-part answer to your
question. The industry has always closely
assessed its safety programs under the
goal of continuous improvement. At
the same time, we are assessing the
cumulative effect of NRC regulations
so that we can be certain that we are
doing the things that are most important
to safety first. Safe, reliable operations
of the nuclear plant are the first priority,
not only from the regulator’s perspective
but from the licensee perspective. Plants
must operate safely, or they can’t run.
We have found, and the NRC agrees
with this, that the cumulative effects of
regulation throughout
the years can poten-
tially hinder safety, or
cost significant sums
of money for no safe-
ty improvement. New
regulations in particu-
lar need to be priori-
tized for what really
is safety significant to
the plants.
Take
training
for example. How
can you assess the
safety significance of
a training program
accreditation cycle,
whether it should
be four years or six
years? That type of assessment takes a
high degree of professional expertise
in that functional area. It takes some
analysis of what the trends are in the
specific functional area, and then an
assessment on what adjustments can
be made to reduce the administrative
burden on the end user at the site without
affecting safety.
We’ve asked over the years for some
prioritization of regulatory actions. The
NRC has listened. Now I believe the
regulator, licensees, NEI and INPO are
aligned in looking at the major safety
indices.
The safety performance trends of
licensees are on a positive trend, both from
an equipment and a human performance
perspective standpoint. The regulator and
the industry agree with that, but speaking
for the industry, we are never satisfied
on simply improving the safety trend.
There is also acknowledgement from all
parties that we have added many layers
of administrative burden on these plants,
and now with new regulation that’s
coming out regarding post-Fukushima
requirements, if we don’t do a good job
prioritizing the most important things
first, it will be harder to keep our priority
on pushing our safety performance even
higher. That’s the intent behind the
cumulative impact initiative.
Another example on some self-
identified safety actions are pre-job
briefs. Before a worker goes out in the
field and goes to work, they must meet
with their supervisor. Then they sit with
the Radiation Protection department and
with Operations departments to go over
the scope of the job to be performed and
any potential hazards that they should be
aware of related to the job.
There is a graded approach to the job
based on the complexity of the work and
the potential risks that are involved.
We’ve made adjustments to our
training programs, and still maintain or
improve our performance indicators each
year. I call it “check and adjust”.
2.
Does the cumulative impact initiative
interact or interface with Exelon’s
corrective action program or safety culture?
Safety culture is management’s
effectiveness in ensuring that the
workforce knows the importance of
the industry in which they’re working.
Our employees must understand the
importance of raising issues and concerns,
the importance of making sure that work
is being done to the highest standards.
The cumulative impact initiative
absolutely supports and supplements that
message because leadership is telling
them we want to work on the most
important projects first. I see this as a
significant enhancement from a safety
culture perspective. We want to make
sure that we do a good job in prioritizing
the most important work from a safety
perspective.
The corrective action program, or
CAP as we call it, is a critical program
in the nuclear industry. However, we’ve
built additional layers and responsibilities
into the program beyond its fundamental
responsibility, which is making sure
actions to resolve an operations issue are
identified and completed in a safe and
effective manner. This isn’t the regulator
32
NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2015
