Prioritizing
Plant
Safety
By Gary Mignogna, AREVA Inc.
Gary Mignogna
Gary Mignogna was appointed the
President and Chief Executive Officer of
AREVA Inc. on June 1, 2014. Mignogna
joined AREVA in 1981, where he built a
body of experience
in engineering
design and analyses,
project engineering,
product management,
field services,
services tooling
and equipment
design, component
and welding
engineering, business
development,
and product line
management. He
started AREVA’s
Engineering
qualification program
– modeled after
INPO’s program – and is the founding
sponsor of the Voyager rotational
program for up-and-coming leaders in
engineering.
Mignogna has been a member of the
Nuclear Strategic Issues Advisory
Committee since 2007. He is currently
a member of the Nuclear Energy
Institute Board of Directors, Executive
Committee, and Nominating Committee.
Mignogna earned Bachelor’s and
Master’s degrees in Mechanical
Engineering from Drexel University,
and holds a master’s degree in Business
Administration from Lynchburg College.
An interview by Newal Agnihotri, Editor
of Nuclear Plant Journal, at the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission’s Regulatory
Information Conference in North
Bethesda, Maryland on March 10, 2015.
Safety and security are primary
focuses of AREVA’s products, services,
and business operations. One way that
we deliver on this commitment, is by
helping our customers achieve a high
level of safety and security in their
nuclear facility operations.
Through some of our engineering
contracts, we’ve engineered plant modi-
fications to install fiber optic backbones,
which are the start of enabling site-wide
digital integration, where maintenance
technicians or engineers can walk around
the plant with remote devices, plug them
in, and download procedures or report
surveillance observations. AREVA’s
EPR reactors are designed with that capa-
bility in mind. ARE-
VA’s TELEPERM®
XS digital control
system, which is
NRC approved and
licensed, meets all
current cyber security
requirements.
We are also ex-
perts in cyber secu-
rity, which is an im-
portant element of
these enhanced modi-
fications. One of the
keys for success in
cyber security for the
nuclear power indus-
try is to have techni-
cally knowledgeable resources, both in
understanding cyber security needs and
plant system knowledge. This can be lev-
eraged by our customers who are actively
addressing the cyber security issue.
1.
Are there several plants where you
are implementing cyber security, or are
you piloting it somewhere?
Cyber security plays a significant role
in securing the infrastructure assets for the
nuclear sector. Through our partnerships
with other cyber security experts who possess
unique nuclear experience, our services have
been provided to several plants to ensure
critical digital assets are being protected.
Teams of highly skilled engineers
work daily to protect the nation’s critical
assets against threats and exposure. And
because of strict regulatory oversight and
a culture steeped in safety and security,
there is no better industry suited to
address cyber security for the energy
sector than the nuclear industry.
We have engineers in 34 locations
in the United States. Supporting this
digital system engineering work, and
installation expertise, our engineers are
grouped at our Charlotte, North Carolina;
Lynchburg, VA; and Fort Worth, Texas,
facilities.
2.
How is AREVA sharing technical
and innovative information internally
through social media?
We’ve benchmarked some companies
outside of the nuclear industry that have
internal community concepts, similar to
Wikipedia, where you have a database that
anyone can access. For example, in our
pilot program, an engineer can expand or
comment on an existing article, publish a new
one in their field of knowledge or interest, or
exchange ideas with others on the dedicated
forum. That individual’s information is then
available for all engineers.
We’ve used different types of
knowledge transfer programs and, from
my experience, the direct one-on-one
mentorship isn’t as effective as the group
sharing, because then you’re still only
one deep. Presenting the information in
brownbag seminars or establishing an
online internal databasewheremore senior
people can document their knowledge for
future use is much more valuable than a
one-on-one mentoring type program.
Using internal social media platforms
is a great idea. I think we’re sort of infants
in that area – using it for those kinds
of purposes – but it’s certainly an area
we’re interested in growing. There are
other mechanisms, as well, in the nuclear
industry to share information. When you
develop methodologies and then submit
topical reports for review and acceptance,
you’re providing the same information
in those reports that you would put on
internal social media.
3.
Explain AREVA’s mentoring and
educational programs.
We have a lot of programs;
everything
from
training
skilled
technicians through advanced education,
master’s degrees, etc., for our engineers.
We have a cooperative program with
our local community colleges where we
take young high school students, who
are interested in nuclear technologies
but not necessarily in a four-year degree,
and we enroll them in an AREVA-
supported nuclear technologies program
36
NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2015
