Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2015 NuclearPlantJournal.com
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618-244-6000
NEW QUALIFICATIONS TO SUPPORT
Power Uprates
•
License Extension
•
Changes in Postulated Conditions
INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO
OBSOLESCENCE ISSUES
COMMERCIAL GRADE QUALIFICATION AND DEDICATION SINCE 1979
E X P E D I T E D QUA L I F I C AT I ON
D E D I C AT I ON & P E R F O RMAN C E T E S T I NG
Nutherm
International, Inc.
A W o m a n - O w
that includes them working for us during
outage seasons. They go to school when
we’re not in outage season. By the
end of the program, the students have
earned a two-year degree, and have an
option to enroll in a four-year program.
If they choose this option, we continue
sponsoring them through their four-year
program while, again, they’re working
for us. For example, we have a really
good program with the University of
Virginia, called Produced in Virginia,
where these students work for us 20 to 30
hours a week while they earn their four-
year degree.
Beyond that, with all of the available
advanced online education, we have a lot
of working students pursuing master’s
degrees in mechanical, electrical, nuclear,
and others through online programs with
reputable institutions like N.C. State,
Virginia Tech, and other schools. There
are numerous ways to pursue advanced
degrees while working for AREVA. We
encourage it, and we pay for it, as long
as they maintain a B average, through an
education reimbursement program.
We also strongly encourage continued
skills education. Whenever we deploy
somebody to the field, they have honed
their expertise in our extensive training
center in Lynchburg, Virginia. In the
training center, we’ve built mockups for
everything that we do, including BWR
and PWR refueling bridges and a fuel
pool where we train on moving mock fuel
assemblies. We have mockups for all types
of services, whether it’s repair, inspection,
or maintenance. We continue to improve
the skills of our technicians and craft
workers, both union and nonunion, to train
them before we deploy, so that when we
get to the field, we do it right the first time.
We also provide soft skills training,
including what we call a high-stakes
field leadership program designed for
employees leading field service work
and a high-stakes leadership program
designed for project and engineering
leaders. Other AREVA programs focus
on training employees engaged in other
aspects of the business. We emphasize
the nuclear safety culture, the operational
excellence INPO model, and those soft
skills that are absolutely essential –
beyond just the technical skills – to make
sure that AREVA’s culture is appropriate
for the industry that we’re in; because
nuclear technology is special, and we
need to treat it that way.
4.
What is the progress of the post-
Fukushima
National
Emergency
Response Center project completion?
In alliance with PEICo, we teamed
with Southern Company to help establish
and manage the U.S. nuclear industry’s
two national FLEX response centers,
one located in Memphis, Tennessee,
and one in Phoenix, Arizona These two
centers contain five redundant sets each
of emergency equipment to deploy at a
moment’s notice when a facility needs
assistance during a beyond-design-basis
event. The equipment is now in place
and tested, and the technician training
completed. To demonstrate that all the
equipment works well and the right
connections are installed at the nuclear
facilities, we conducted drills at selected
plants to confirm that, when this additional
equipment is deployed, it hooks up and
everything will work. We’re well down
the path, and everything’s going well.
5.
NRC has come up with Tier 1, Tier
2, Tier 3 requirements. How is AREVA
helping utilities meet these regulatory
requirements?
We’ve been closely engaged with
customers, helping them develop and
execute their response to the Tier 1
requirements. The industry’s emergency
response FLEX program is in place
and being implemented at U.S. nuclear
facilities. Each site has taken their own path
on implementing the FLEX requirements,
and how they deploy them.
We just finished a campaign for
one customer, for example, where we
did all the design modifications required
at the plant, including engineering and
implementation. At some plants, we are
just doing the engineering, and at others
we’re doing the implementation. Each
plant site is unique and they determine their
own course for implementations, but it may
involve constructing a new FLEX building,
which can withstand beyond-design-basis
events: flooding, earthquakes, tsunamis
or anything that could potentially hit the
facility. Similar to the regional response
centers, a certain amount of emergency
equipment is stored within the site’s FLEX
building for immediate response. As I
mentioned earlier, the facility’s external
hookups are updated to ensure the FLEX
