Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2016 NuclearPlantJournal.com
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Mark Marano
Mark Marano brings nearly 30 years of
nuclear industry and vendor operations
experience as president, Americas and
Europe, Middle East and Africa Regions
(EMEA).
Mr. Marano is
responsible for
customer relationships,
account team
development, and
government and
regulatory affairs
within the two
Regions. He also
oversees global
marketing; commercial
operations;
and corporate
development,
strategy and facilities
management. Mr.
Marano’s proven track record and
experience help to enhance customer
value while realizing targeted strategic
growth.
Mr. Marano holds board directorships
with Westinghouse Electric Company,
Toshiba America Energy Systems, E4
Carolinas and National Association
of Manufacturers. He graduated from
Oswego State University in 1984
with a Bachelor’s degree in business
administration.
commercial reactors by 2019, and that this
will be followed with a more elaborate lead
test rod and assembly program in 2022.
Howell
: With accident tolerant fuel,
the financial benefit to utilities will be
that many of the systems currently in
plants to prevent or mitigate a reaction
should fuel be exposed to hot steam
under accident conditions will not be
necessary. Operating plants will realize
very significant savings in maintenance,
licensing, and engineering change
packages associated with maintaining
these systems. This is because current
Zircaloy fuel rod tube cladding, if
exposed to high-temperature steam
under severe accident conditions, will
react and generate heat and hydrogen.
This reaction will ultimately melt the
fuel. Westinghouse accident tolerant fuel
cladding is a silicon carbide ceramic
that has a much lower reaction to steam
and does not generate hydrogen gas.
Currently, if a plant has a problemwith any
of the systems in place to accommodate
current cladding, plant personnel have
12 to 24 hours to take some action or
shut the plant down. With Westinghouse
silicon carbide accident tolerant fuel,
plants will have the opportunity to
continue to run and maintain those
systems in a non-regulatory-driven way
because severe accident conditions
will not result in a Fukushima or Three
Mile Island type accident. So this will
be a huge cost improvement from the
utility’s perspective. These costs savings
will apply to currently operating plants,
and also for future plants since capital
costs will be significantly reduced due to
the much simpler nuclear steam supply
system design that will be possible.
3.
On the topic of fuel, provide me an
update about your Västerås, Sweden fuel
facility?
Howell
:
We
are
expanding
our Västerås Nuclear Fuel Factory
to accommodate the EDF fuel we
manufacture and the growing demand
for nuclear fuel supply diversification for
VVER-1000 reactors in Europe. This is a
growing part of our business.
Marano:
We are delivering five re-
loads of VVER fuel this year to the South
Ukraine and Zaporizhia nuclear power
plants. Last year we delivered one reload.
We are definitely expanding our market
in Europe. Westinghouse will deliver
VVER fuel to approximately 30%-35%
of the available market that we’re pursu-
ing. We’ve invested in additional produc-
tion facilities, engineering work, and pro-
cess and assembly
equipment for man-
ufacturing the fuel.
It’s almost ready to
become operational;
in fact, we are be-
ginning to install
equipment. Manu-
facturing and de-
livering the VVER
fuel has worked out
very well for us and
for the customer
because now we’ve
created an option
for them. They’re a
good customer in a
very difficult politi-
cal situation. They
reached out and we’ve assertively pur-
sued the opportunity. We are committed.
Our investment in Västerås is well worth-
while.
4.
How do you train outage staff to ensure
the quality of work performed at the plants?
Howell
: Our first priorities in training
are, of course, nuclear safety and quality.
When we bring subcontractors onto a field
site, we train them exactly the same as our
Westinghouse full-time personnel in the
areas of human performance and safety,
including lifting and rigging and any other
safety-related activity. It is important
to understand that our approach with
subcontractors follows our philosophy.
Many of our subcontractors have long-
term agreements with us, and all parties
are motivated to have subcontractor
personnel return to our jobs. We know
their training and performance histories.
This is an advantage for all of us because
we can maintain a fully qualified and
very confident resource of personnel who
augment the full-time staff.
For training, we utilize a variety of
methods, including videos and online
learning. This allows us to make sure that
we can disseminate the same information
to full-time and subcontractor personnel
no matter where they are in the country
or the world. In addition to implementing
a consistent and thorough training
program, we are also using technology
to help monitor field work to ensure the
quality of work we perform at plants. We
are doing this through our WEConnect™
System, which is continuing to be piloted.
Our workers use tablets onsite and we are
able, via our procedure-based Interactive
Work Management System, to directly
monitor with them what is happening in
the field from our outage control center.
This has many benefits including the
ability to verify that the next step of the
procedure, the individual is working on is
the correct one, and if the individual has
a question or need, there is immediate
access to experts within the outage control
center. Training and monitoring will be
further enhanced with our upcoming
WEGlass. WEGlass are specialized
glasses that provide wireless information
display and capture to facilitate plant
workers’ performance during outages.
These smart glasses will include real-
time display of radiation dose rates, total
