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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2014
Utility,
Industry &
Corporation
Utility
Nuclear Fleet
Three nuclear energy plants owned
by Constellation Energy Nuclear
Group, LLC officially joined
Exelon
Generation’s
fleet of nuclear plants,
expanding what was already the nation’s
largest commercial nuclear operation.
The three CENG plants include five
reactors capable of generating more than
4,200 megawatts at full power. The three
plants are R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power
Plant in Ontario, New York, Nine Mile
Point Nuclear Station in Scriba, New
York, and Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power
Plant in Lusby.
The NRC approved license transfers
for the three plants on Tuesday, March
25, 2014.
The consolidation, which followed
the March 2012 merger between Exelon
and Constellation Energy Group Inc.,
expands the fleet of reactors Exelon
operates to 23 nuclear generating.
Michael J. Pacilio, Exelon Nuclear’s
President and Chief Nuclear Officer, will
lead the newly expanded fleet, which
will operate under Exelon Nuclear’s
management model, a driver of success
and consistent operations at all stations.
Maria G. Korsnick will remain chief
nuclear officer of CENG.
Contact:
Krista
Lopykinski,
telephone: (630) 657-3602.
Top Industry Practice
A team of
Southern Nuclear
engineers at the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear
Plant were recently honored at Nuclear
Energy Institute’s Nuclear Energy
Assembly in Phoenix, Arizona They
received the nuclear industry’s highest
honor – a TIP Award – for developing a
Top Industry Practice. The team claimed
the 2014 GE Hitachi Vendor Award for its
participation inGEHitachi’s development
of the Stinger™ Automated IVVI, a new
first-of-a-kind tool for performing in-
vessel visual inspections.
The radiation-tolerant Stinger™ tool
features a unique extendable inspection
camera and weld cleaning system that’s
operated by workers positioned hundreds
of feet away from the vessel cavity.
The inspection camera leader system
is maneuverable. It can pan, tilt and
rotate in five axes of motion, even around
corners, to obtain the optimal view. For
the Unit 2 outage, inspection coverage
increased 20-30 percent, and the visual
quality of the exams also improved.
With traditional in-vessel visual
inspections, several outage activities must
be suspended during fuel shuffles and
new fuel replacement, to protect workers.
With ROV technology, which allowed
inspection operators to work safely from
a remote location, employees’ exposure to
radiation showed a marked improvement.
Contact: telephone: (205) 992-5395.
Industry
Safety Enhancement
On April 8, 2014, the
Nuclear
Energy Agency
(NEA
)
in co-operation
with the Nuclear Regulation Authority
(NRA) of Japan held an international
conference on global nuclear safety
enhancement in Tokyo, Japan. High-
level experts from nuclear regulatory
authorities in France, Japan, Korea,
Russia and the United States reviewed
international developments in nuclear
safety since the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant accident in March
2011, as the international community
works to strengthen nuclear safety at the
global level. At the conference, OECD
Secretary-General Angel Gurría spoke
about sound energy policies for economic
and social development and insisted
on very high levels of safety as the
first condition for using nuclear power.
NRA Chairman, Dr. Shunichi Tanaka
also stressed the importance of the
independence, technical capability and
transparency of the regulatory authorities,
as well as a strong safety culture.
Contact: Cynthia Gannon-Picot, telephone:
33 1 45 24 10 10, email:
Leveraging Technology
Standard
outage
management
communications tend to be conducted
over the phone, in face-to-face reports
and in outage center briefings.
Idaho
National Laboratory
observed Arizona
Public Service’s spring 2013 outage
control center technologies for the next
outage in the fall of 2013, which involved
the challenge of repairing a reactor
bottom vessel-mounted instrumentation
leak.
The entire organization mobilized
for the repair, supported by collaborative
technology. They used Microsoft
OneNote to collect, organize, and share
information, including photos, drawings,
schedules, and action items. Every aspect
of inspections, repairs and recovery
planning was in one easily searchable,
consistently organized place, network-
accessible from any work station on site.
These communication technologies
ensured that the outage and its repair,
which earned Nuclear Energy Institute’s
TIP Award for Maintenance and the
Westinghouse Combustion Engineering
Vendor Award, were completed on
schedule. The team helped to save
40 critical path days compared to the
previous repair of its kind, for a direct
savings cost of $48 million.
INL plans to publish a report
documenting implementation of advanced
outage control center technologies, which
are transferable across the industry.
Contact: Shawn St. Germain,
Director-General
The
OECD
Secretary-General
announced the appointment of Mr.
William D. Magwood as the next
Director-General of the OECD Nuclear
Energy Agency (NEA). He will be
succeeding Luis E. Echávarri who is
William Magwood.
