September-October 2017 NPJ

Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2017 NuclearPlantJournal.com 33 process related. We’re really starting to see that technology is absolutely vital in so many areas of making the existing fleet more cost competitive, more able to be competitive in the long term, and also addressing issues of aging components and aging technology. We need to find ways of managing obsolescence. But as we’re going through this and doing our research and working with utilities, we also see that they, themselves, are looking for ways to innovate and reengineer their business processes and looking for technologies to help them do that. I would say that the biggest game changers, the biggest innovations recently have been both the technologies that help plants to move forward with digital technologies throughout their plants, as well as help them to innovate with business process reengineering. It’s really in those two areas. That’s been the big things since early 2016. The other insight that I’ll share is that every plant that we’re working with is dealing with the issues of how to implement technology and ensure that there’s a return on investment. All of our research is typically accompanied by business case studies that we hire external business consultants to perform, not ourselves, but business consultants to perform independently, to really assess and ensure that there is a business case for the technology that we’re conducting research with, and what that business case is. For example, how does it make sense to implement a given technology in a commercial nuclear power plant environment? Those are some of the big takeaways, I would say, from this year’s research. Technology is still very, very key. Computer-based procedures, automated work package technology that continues to be a technology area that we conduct research with and the commercial nuclear power industry has responded and shown a lot of interest in. They, themselves, are developing technologies and implementing those around the country. They’re also looking into wireless technology, so that they can implement those in their plants, and the supporting IT infrastructure to actually make them work and enable them. Along with that, though, they’re looking at how to reengineer their work processes so that they can take these technologies, as an example, and actually deploy them, because you can’t just take a piece of technology and say well, I’m going to go and use this in my plant now. Most of the time, you have to actually change your work processes as well for these things that have a long-term return on the investment. That’s an example. 7. Concluding comments. I believe that the seamless digital environment is really going to be a key enabling area for the nuclear power industry in the future. This is a way for owner-operators to be able to bring in digital technologies and to work with digital technologies without having to redesign the systems or to have to acquire proprietary solutions every single time they bring in a new piece of technology. A seamless digital environment is a way of using data that’s available in the organization, every time work is performed, every time a piece of equipment operates or is put into use. It’s a way of digitizing information from everything that’s done in the plant, all the time, 24/7, and can be made useful and usable by work processes so that utilities can really understand what’s happening when they do the work that they perform normally all the time and look at the information and use it to help them optimize their work and work processes. It’s also a way to go from paper-based technologies and processes, which are really a 19th century way of working, to newer technology in a way that allows them to manage the transition and to own the transition digitally. This is something, I think, that hopefully you’re going to hear more about in the future, as we move forward with it. Contact: Bruce Hallbert, Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625, Idaho Falls, Idaho 83415; telephone: (208) 526-9867, email: bruce.hallbert@ inl.gov. 520-748-7900 www.otekcorp.com SINCE 1974 BARGRAPHS TRANSMITTERS DPM-COUNTERS-TIMERS LOOP/SIGNAL/UNIVERSAL POWER INPUT SIGNAL FAIL ALARM ISOLATED RS485-USB-ETHERNET DAS-SCADA-CYBER SECURITY READY MIL-NUCLEAR-INDUSTRIAL GRADES AND CUSTOMS AUTOMATIC TRICOLOR DISPLAY ISOLATED 4-20mA/VDC & RELAYS OUT >50 ANALOG INPUT SIGNALS 15 DIGITAL INPUT SIGNALS LIFETIME WARRANTY/>25 YEAR MTBF CATALOG-GUI-PRICE-ORDER ONLINE 1-4 ISOLATED CHANNELS>40 MODELS! COMMON FEATURES (ALL SERIES) REMOTE DISPLAY/CONTROLLER UPM NTM NTI MADE IN THE USA