May-June 2019 NPJ

24 NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2019 Coordinating and... ( Continued from page 23) on our world-class training facility here in Lynchburg to prepare teams for these outages. Depending on the arrangement with a particular utility, the utility may send some of their personnel to make use of our training facility, either jointly with us or just as a training activity for their team if they’re more of a self-performed utility. Framatome has invested heavily in our Technical Training Center, which includes a wide range of mock-ups that help the company meet nuclear maintenance needs across the U.S. Demitrius Davis: The Framatome Technical Training Center is world class withmock-ups sized to scale and advanced technology refueling equipment. Trainees utilize current industry standards for operating procedures (site specific for Framatome), foreign material exclusion (FME) practices and many others. 11. Describe your mock-up facility in Lynchburg. Mike Carpenter: We built the core of our Technical Training Center in 2002 with the mission to train Framatome’s North American outage workers and employees, as well as teams from our customers. The facility contains steam generator mock-ups that we can use for training in steam generator inspections. We have a refueling pool with a manipulator crane for a PWR, so we can practice moving fuel and conducting the underwater work. We have a BWR refueling bridge where we can also move fuel for BWRs and conduct in-vessel maintenance training. And we have an under-vessel mock-up where we can train for control drive change outs for BWRs, as well as an extensive number of smaller mock-ups for very specialized work. 12. How do Framatome and Southern Nuclear integrate to prepare for and complete an outage? Demitrius Davis: Having an on- site Framatome presence ensures active engagement with Southern Nuclear’s outage planning, execution and the post- outage critique life cycle, among others. As a member of the team, Framatome challenges the status quo functionally and cross-functionally during outage management meetings, vertical slice schedule reviews and readiness reviews. During the outage, the Framatome site director is integrated into the site’s outage control center, which has been key to ensuring readiness and execution of our critical path scope. Mike Carpenter: When we start preparing for the outage, the core on-site team integrates with Framatome’s larger outage team to perform the refueling and the reactor disassembly work. We supplement this team with a broader group during the two weeks prior to an outage and the three weeks of the outage. Having Southern Nuclear invested in this type of work has helped our team perform to a very high standard. 13. What safety measures are taken to ensure safety of the plant during and after an outage? Demitrius Davis: It starts with prioritizing safety in our outage goals. The objective for the Farley Unit 2 Refuel 26 outage was “Safe and Error Free.” We measured this objective daily through targeted safety observations Framatome’s control rod drive shaft mechanical latching/unlatching tool. (Continued on page 47)