Delivering
the Nuclear
Promise
By Maria Korsnick and Marvin Fertel,
Nuclear Energy Institute.
Maria Korsnick
Maria Korsnick has extensive nuclear
industry operations and executive
experience. She
joined the Nuclear
Energy Institute
(NEI) in May 2015
as a loaned executive
from Exelon and
is serving as chief
operating officer.
In this role, she is
responsible for all
of NEI’s divisions
(Nuclear Generation;
Governmental
Affairs;
Communications;
Legal; Policy
Development and
Planning; Suppliers
and International
Programs; and Member Relations and
Corporate Services).
Korsnick serves as a leader in several
industry groups, including chair of the
U.S. Industry’s Fukushima Response
Steering Committee.
Korsnick earned her bachelor’s degree
in nuclear engineering from the
University of Maryland and she has held
a Senior Reactor Operator license at
Calvert Cliffs.
An interview by Newal Agnihotri, Editor
of Nuclear Plant Journal, at the Utility
Working Conference in Amelia Island,
Florida on August 17, 2016.
1.
Define what “the nuclear promise”
is. Is there any other industry that has
used a similar model?
MariaKorsnick
: I’mnot aware of any
other industry doing this. But your other
question is what is the nuclear promise. I
would say it’s recognizing nuclear value.
What I mean by that is recognizing the
nuclear value from the nuclear worker
perspective, recognizing it and bringing
the best that we can, the most efficient
process, and recognizing the nuclear value
in the markets, where right now we would
argue that the electricity markets do not
appropriately reflect nuclear value. From
a nuclear owner-
operator,
supplier-
vendor
standpoint,
we appreciate the
importance of safety.
We’re not changing
that. We appreciate the
value of reliability. But
we’re smart enough
to know how to keep
both of those. In fact,
not just keep them, but
improve them, but also
to do it smarter.
I think if you’re
not part of the
industry, you might
not appreciate it well,
if I changed this thing
over here, I might affect that. We are
smart enough to appreciate what brought
us those high levels of safety and what
brought us those high levels of reliability.
We can still respect and embrace those
while we make our processes more
efficient. The reality is if you look at how
some of our processes were invented, 30-
40 years ago you started out with, and
then you added something on. Then
somebody else had a best practice, and
you bolted that on. Somebody else got in
trouble for something. You didn’t want
that to happen, and you bolted something
else on. We have sort of a patchwork
quilt of things, and it would be amazing if
we were efficient, quite frankly, because
we never designed it for efficiency. We
just added and bolted things on. Now
the challenge is to step back and say
okay, but if I gave you a clean sheet of
paper, how would you design your work
management process? Now that you have
computers and digitization and all this
stuff, would you design it the same way?
Would it be so paper intensive? Would
it have all these things that you have, or
would you have a fresh view? Well, the
reality is people are saying mm, I would
have a fresh view, not only of the process,
but maybe some of the stuff I put through
the process. Maybe I’m putting so much
stuff through, it doesn’t even need to go
through.
It’s really, as I said, an opportunity
to think fresh, and it’s really unleashing
quite a creativity flow because, again,
people have felt for a long while, why do
I do it this way in nuclear, because when
I go over and work at the fossil plant and
I work on their turbine, it’s really very
different, and I kind of get to work very
quickly, and I get right about my business.
You know what? Your turbine looks very
much the same. How come I have to do
all this other stuff? Our challenge is why
is it that I have to do all that other stuff?
Why don’t we tailor our processes to be
very robust on the systems that require it,
and maybe I have some systems that don’t
necessarily need all of that, and why don’t
I differentiate? That’s just one example.
But again, we’re very passionate
about safety and very passionate about
reliability. The other question I get a
lot of times is oh, I get it, Maria. You’re
going to lower your standards. That’s
how you’re going to get it to work.
Absolutely not. At INPO, an example
of a standard is a PO&C, performance,
objective and criteria. That’s what you
get judged against. We’re not changing
the performance objectives and criteria, if
you want to say that’s the standard. That’s
the high bar. But what we’re changing is
how do you achieve those POs and C’s.
2.
What is the role of industry suppliers
in, “Delivering the Nuclear Promise”?
Korsnick
: Let me start with your
first question, in terms of what has NEI
done to drive this collaboration to make the
nuclear promise a reality. It’s actually been
very deliberate on our part, that we felt that
the best product on behalf of the industry
was going to be collaboration, whether
that was with the utilities or the suppliers.
Specifically, with the suppliers, I’ll be
honest, in the beginning, they felt a little left
out because we started with the utilities, and
we started with the chief nuclear officers,
and we were trying to get sort of a critical
mass, get the concept going.
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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2016
