May-June 2019 NPJ

Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2019 NuclearPlantJournal.com 23 (Continued on page 24) Demitrius Davis Demitrius Davis is the fleet outage services director of Southern Nuclear located in Birmingham, Alabama. His team is responsible for managing NDE Services, Turbine Services, Fleet Dry Storage and Refueling programs, and major strategic alliances for Southern Nuclear. He also is responsible for establishing and maintaining governance, oversight and resolution of emerging fleet and industry issues that challenge nuclear safety, successful execution of refueling outage services activities and used fuel loading outages. Davis holds both a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and a Master of Engineering in civil engineering with a concentration in construction management from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2017, Davis received his Senior Reactor Operator (SRO) Certification at Farley Nuclear Plant. 6. What is an example of a predictable and unpredictable situation? Mike Carpenter: Predictable is planning for a task to take 10 hours and finishing it in 9.5 to 10.5 hours. Unpredictable is finishing in five or 15 hours. It’s not always better to finish early if the next team isn’t ready to start their work. When we find ourselves in the enviable situation of being ahead of schedule, it’s imperative that we communicate exactly where we are and when we predict we will be done so that the gains are not lost in the handoff. 7. What is the role of robots in a refueling outage? Mike Carpenter: Framatome extensively deploys robotics to do inspection work underwater and in steam generators. At Plant Farley, for instance, we deployed a mix of robots to do the steam generator inspections. At other plants, we’ve used a tool called HawkEYE to improve in-vessel visual inspection activities. 8. What capabilities does Framatome bring to an outage when it’s not the original equipment manufacturer (OEM)? Mike Carpenter: We try harder and we prioritize innovation. We’ll view a problem that the OEM has been looking at for awhile through a different lens and, as a result, we are often able to offer a new solution. Framatome has also become very good at managing transitions; not only the transition from vendor to vendor for outage services, but the transition within the outage from our tasks to other stakeholders, like operations. Our heritage in Lynchburg is as the OEM for B&W and Framatome plants. But we’ve also worked in C o m b u s t i o n Engineering, Westinghouse and General Electric plants. Our company maintains a substantial fleet of very similar reactors in France and we have quite a resume of working in these plants over the last 30 to 40 years. For outage work, most plants are well into the 20th to 30th outage, and there’s a wealth of experience that applies directly across pressurized water reactor (PWR) and boiling water reactor (BWR) designs. 9. What is a utility’s role in plant outage management? Mike Carpenter: The utility runs the outage. Depending on the utility, their business model, their fleet and their expertise, they’ll hire out different scopes of work. Often the reactor work and specialty inspections are hired out to a company like Framatome because these inspections fall outside of the utility’s core business of making electricity. 10. How does Framatome prepare its team for an upcoming outage, and what training facilities or other opportunities does Framatome use? Does Southern Nuclear prepare its team for an upcoming outage? And how much in advance is that preparation? Mike Carpenter: Outage planning is a year-round activity, including working with the utility to set scopes, budgets and high-level goals. For Framatome, it really kicks into high gear in the six months or so before an outage. That work includes staffing our teams and developing training schedules. We rely Technician operates the control rod drive shaft mechanical latching/ unlatching tool from the Stearns Roger® PWR manipulator crane at Framatome’s Technical Training Center in Lynchburg, Virginia.