May-June 2019 NPJ

22 NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2019 Coordinating and Implementing a Successful Refueling Outage By Mike Carpenter, Framatome and Demitrius Davis, Southern Nuclear. Mike Carpenter Mike Carpenter is the vice president of Outage Services at Framatome, consisting of PWR & BWR Reactor Services. His portfolio also includes Framatome’s Stearns Roger ® Services. Prior to this role, he served as the vice president of Engineering and Licensing. Carpenter has more than 30 years of engineering and business management experience in the commercial nuclear industry. He holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Clemson University and a Master of Business from Lynchburg College. A telephone interview on May 14, 2019 by Newal Agnihotri, Editor of Nuclear Plant Journal. Innovation, Safety and Economy in Outage Management 1. What are Framatome’s unique approaches for outage management from their perspective, as well as the utility’s. Mike Carpenter: Successful outages really come down to two or three points. First, we prioritize a team-oriented environment where people not only understand their roles but hold themselves and each other accountable. Second, we put a lot of effort into planning. By placing all the effort in planning, we set the stage for a smooth outage. Third, we continue to innovate. Many of the plants where we work have already performed more than 20 outages. By trying new things and working to improve with each outage, we are always etting better. 2. What are a few f the top innovative measures that have been applied in the ast two years? Mike Carpen- er: I’ll mention one nnovative new tool hat we used at Plant Farley to address a ong-standing outage hallenge. One of the teps in a disassembly f a plant is to unlatch he drive shafts and hen, at the end of he outage, you have to re-latch them to the control component. The tool that’s been used to do that for many, many years was pneumatic and prone to problems because it needs to work reliably underwater. Our manual drive shaft tool is a replacement that eliminates all the pneumatics, sim- plifies the design and improves reliabil- ity. At Plant Farley, we deployed the tool successfully and saved about three hours of critical path time. 3. What innovative measures have you adopted from your international counterparts in other countries or from Paris which will help shorten the outage time and make it economical? Mike Carpenter: Framatome looks at its R&D as a coordinated effort internationally. For example, an innovation like the manual drive shaft tool could be developed in the U.S. and then deployed internationally. The converse is also true; we deploy tools in the U.S. developed by our peers in Paris and Germany, such as the thimble tube cleaning tool that greatly improved the thimble cleaning and recovery process. 4. How do Framatome and Southern Nuclear cooperate so that you can shorten and optimize outages? Mike Carpenter: For Southern’s Plant Farley, we put a person on-site full time when we took over the contract a few years ago. This on-the-ground perspective proved invaluable for successfully transitioning onto the site by putting into place the teamwork and communication that’s so important to planning an outage successfully. Demitrius Davis: In addition, our Framatome site director is fully integrated in the Farley leadership team. He is uniquely positioned to add industry perspective in real time while feeding enhancement opportunities back to Lynchburg to leverage the full strength of Framatome’s organization for shared performance improvement. 5. Is your outage management center located in Lynchburg? Mike Carpenter: Yes, our Outage Control Center (OCC) is located in Lynchburg, Virginia. During outage season, we staff the center 24/7, and the OCC’s number is monitored 24/7, year- round. Framatome relies on the OCC as a valuable tool to not only monitor and support the work that’s going on at a given time, but it’s also a way for a utility or a Framatome team to call and request assistance. Even the best planned outages will face unexpected challenges on occasion. To remain predictable, you have to be able to respond to the unpredictable in short order and in a quality way. Our OCC helps us with that response as well. g o l t i t l c s o t t t