Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2016 NuclearPlantJournal.com
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We have a specific group within NEI,
the suppliers advisory committee. We got
advice from them and worked with them
and wanted very much for them to feel
involved, but by the same token, if they
all just represented themselves, and they
wanted to participate in teams that we had,
it was just way too many people. So, we
said well, let’s figure out how to get you
represented on a team, but if you’re on a
team, you need to represent the supplier
community. So, if you’re planning on the
engineering team, and let’s say you’re one
vendor, you need to represent the other
vendors. Whatever’s going on with that
team, then you need to bring back to the
other vendors and collaborate with them
and make sure that there’s appropriate
understanding. It was really part of the
formula, if you will, in terms of their
participation in some teams that had
already kicked off, that the vendors were
meeting to collaborate more closely than
perhaps they had in the past.
Marvin Fertel
: I think the big thing
right now, both for the vendors and the
utilities, is they know that the industry
needs us to get much more efficient. It’s
not going to necessarily result in saving
all the plants that are at risk, but one of
the things about delivering the nuclear
promise, is that it’s not just how do we
get more efficient and therefore, reduce
cost, it’s how do we get more revenue too.
It’s, how do we get much more
efficient? How do we do that in a way
that really, culturally, isn’t just an event
today, but something that is sustainable
for the long term, and then, also, how do
we drive more revenue to the companies?
In our supplier meeting yesterday
(August 16, 2016), when we asked them
what they thought was the top priority,
their top priority was saving the existing
plants.
Their second priority was proceeding
with new plants, which we actually agree
with, that you need to do both if we’re
going to provide kind of what we need to,
to our country, and to be honest, beyond
our country, globally. So, delivering the
nuclear promise is having a substantive
benefit, and it’s going to get much more
beneficial as we get into some of the
things that are going to go on over the
next 12 to 18 months. On improving
performance, it’s going to have a much
bigger benefit for the long term on getting
efficiency built in.
3.
Is nuclear promise going organic?
Korsnick
: Oh, absolutely. In fact,
I’ll just reflect, we had a delivering the
nuclear promise steering committee
meeting yesterday. Again, both Marv and
I attended that. A new item on the agenda
was international. We’ve had so many
international requests. When we started
this, we obviously just thought of the
United States. We thought of the markets
that we’re operating in. As Marv said,
it’s to work on the market structure, as
well as to work on the cost structure. But
we’ve had people from Spain. We’ve had
people from Korea. We’ve had people
from the United Kingdom, people from
Canada. So, a lot of interest. In fact, so
much interest that the products typically
that we would put on our member website
that if you’re a member of NEI, that you
would have access to, we’ve had so many
requests we’ve put them on our public
website, just to create openness and
awareness, to say we’re more than happy
to share. Now our efficiency bulletins
in Delivering the Nuclear Promise are
written for the structure that we have here
in the United States. If you don’t have
that structure in whatever country, you’re
going to have to appreciate that these are
written to INPO guidelines, or they’re
written to our structure here. But again,
we’ve received a lot of interest, quite a lot
internationally. So, I was pleased. We had
an international representative yesterday
and invited him to continue engaging us.
I just share that as an example. When you
say it’s gone organic, it is really has.
It’s really sort of taken on a life of
its own. And what’s nice about that is
when Marv and I originally had some of
the early ideas for this, I said well, any
kind of an initiative, it’s sort of a flash in
the pan. You kind of get it started, and
then you think of an initiative, then it
goes away. I said it would be a shame to
get all of this energy and focus and effort,
and then somehow it goes away. Well,
we always wanted to be about safety and
reliability. We’re very safe, very reliable,
but also a good business. The idea was
to create something that is an initiative
now. The initiative part just means get
your attention, put the ideas out there,
but we never really wanted it to die, so to
speak, or to go away. The idea of these
efficiency bulletins, as Marv stated, that
any item that finally comes to fruition
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