September-October 2017 NPJ

Outage Management By Steve Ira, Westinghouse Electric Company.. Stephen Ira Steve Ira is senior vice president of Global Field Services & Plant Modifications for Westinghouse Electric Company LLC. He provides executive leadership for more than 1,200 employees in seven countries who are dedicated to providing full- scope PWR and BWR outage services and plant modifications. During his more than 30-year career, Mr. Ira has held diverse positions across the company including roles in outage management, technical project management, customer account management, engineering design, product management and continuous improvement. Mr. Ira has a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Manhattan College and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a certified Six-Sigma and Lean Manufacturing Blackbelt and a member of the American Nuclear Society. Mr. Ira serves on the board of directors of WesDyne International and the Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of “Autism Speaks.” Responses to questions by Newal Agnihotri, Editor of Nuclear Plant Journal. Customer Outage Success is Our Success 1. What efforts have been made during a recent outage to extend the life of: a. Steam generators b. Reactor pressure vessel head c. Reactor pressure vessel itself The spring 2017 outage season was the largest in Westinghouse history. Our crews supported more than 19 integrated outages, where we had significant scope in multiple service areas, and more than 80 outages overall for PWR and BWR plants throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia. This season de- manded that our crews deliver their very best to overcome a variety of challenges – from outages with signifi- cant schedule overlap, to work scope that in- cluded first-of-a-kind projects. Coupled with the sheer volume of resources needed to execute the work safety and flawlessly, there simply was no room for error. Now that the dust has set- tled, I’m proud to say that overall, our people performed extremely well for our customers around the world. We’re doing some amazing work in the area of steam generator life extension. This spring outage season, our crews completed our first-ever steam generator sleeving campaign in France where we installed more than 1,800 sleeves to help the customer extend the steam generator’s operating life. Overall, our spring outage season included more than 20 steam generator primary and secondary services, which were all aimed toward extending steam generator life expectancy. When it comes to reactor pressure vessel head life extension, we performed inspections of reactor vessel heads at numerous plants in spring 2017. Some of these inspections included laser metrology, which captures thousands of data points to create a three-dimensional model of the head. Some were coupled with control element drive mechanism weld inspections. We also performed a significant amount of work to help our customers extend the life of their reactor pressure vessels. This spring, we successfully inspected more than 2,400 baffle-former bolts and replaced 460 baffle-former bolts at three different plants. A key to our success was the use of our next- generation baffle-former bolt replacement tool, which was developed by our team in Mannheim, Germany. 2. Describe any robotics applications to reduce dosage to the outage workers. Robotics applications are an integral part of nearly all aspects of our outage work. One example is our Zephyr ® Advanced Acquisition System. The Zephyr system uses revolutionary probe delivery to more rapidly perform high- quality eddy current examinations as part of plants’ regular steam generator maintenance programs. At one plant, Zephyr resulted in 22 hours of critical path savings, a 65 percent reduction in personnel dose and a radiological waste reduction of 50 percent. In fact, at one plant where we implemented Zephyr during the spring 2017 outage season, we successfully examined 100 percent of the tubes in a steam generator from a single plenum. That project was also the first time that an eddy current data acquisition speed of 120 inches per second was performed on essentially all of the steam generator’s tubes. In addition, Zephyr also contributed to the plant by using the fewest number of probes ever. These achievements significantly reduced both personnel dose and radiological waste. Another example of how robotics helps us reduce worker dose is with our Underwater Decontamination robot, or U-DEC™. This is a remotely operated, vehicle-style cleaning robot that decontaminates PWR and BWR walls, floors and pressure-retaining domes of reactor cavities by brushing and suction. U-DEC is inserted into the cavity prior to lowering the water level, which can be done in parallel with other critical path work to save total outage time because the work is performed off critical path. U-DEC removes all contaminants from the surfaces cleaned, and there is minimal need for any manual cleaning, if any at 40 NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2017