News

I’ve been in this industry since 1982, and in my very first year, I learned the phrase “The only thing that is constant is change.”  This year has proven the accuracy of that statement once again.  Unbelievable change has occurred since mid-March when the significance of the coronavirus became clear.  The last Executive Spotlight article was issued in February.  Since so much has changed in the last three months, it seems appropriate to update you on some of the plans that had been discussed in the February issue.

In late April, notification was received from the Department of Energy that USA’s “Advanced Remote Monitoring Project,” has been approved for full-scale implementation.  I would like to extend a hearty “CONGRATULATIONS” to the project team for delivering this multi-million-dollar opportunity to the USA members.  This award represents the culmination of almost five years of work and positions USA at the forefront of technologies emerging as a part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  You can read more in the breaking news article released earlier this month.

The Pandemic had a substantial effect on Training across the USA, both the entire country and the USA fleet.  Details surrounding these effects can be found here.

On March 12, a Nuclear Safety Culture Assessment (NSCA) at Columbia Nuclear Generating Plant concluded with an Exit at the station.  The team, which included representatives from Columbia, Oak Ridge National Labs, NuScale Power and the Department of Energy’s Hanford site, determined that the Columbia staff has a safety culture that supports all the INPO Traits of a Healthy Nuclear Safety Culture; has a healthy respect for nuclear safety; and assures that nuclear safety is not compromised by production priorities.

The plan was to travel home from Columbia on Friday, March 13 and then fly to New Jersey to perform the NSCA of Salem and Hope Creek nuclear stations the following week.  It was going to be a busy two weeks.  However, as the evening of March 12 turned into the morning of March 13, it became evident that the team that had been assembled to perform the PSEG assessment would not be allowed to fly to the plant as travel restrictions were issued by several plants late that week and over the weekend.

As of now, USA has the Xcel and Fermi NSCAs scheduled for the weeks of June 15 and August 3, respectively.  Both assessments will be performed remotely.  USA is currently assembling the teams for these assessments and looking for individuals able to conduct an interview via Teams or Zoom.  In addition to the interviewee, the station will have an individual on each call to deal with any adverse conditions that may be revealed during an interview or issues that need to be referred to Employee Concerns.  After the interview, the interview notes will be emailed to Julie Kuhr, our NSCA Process Manager and she will enter the data into the master database.

Our next traditional NSCA will be of the Oak Ridge National Laboratories Spallation Neutron Source.  This assessment will be conducted the week of August 10 and the team is currently being assembled for this assessment.  Anyone interested in serving on this assessment should contact Tim Donovan at 402/414-1477.  We found earlier this year that spending a week at Oak Ridge is a great experience as we were at the Oak Ridge High Flux Isotope Reactor in February.

At the beginning of the year, it looked like Mid-Cycle Assessments would be the challenge of the year.  However, the coronavirus has had a significant impact to that plan, also.  We opened the year with the Palo Verde Mid-Cycle and then had seven additional Mid-Cycle Assessments scheduled.  It looked like 2020 was going to be one of the biggest years for Mid-Cycle Assessments since the Alliance was established.  With travel restrictions still in place at many stations, and sites still restricting visits, a traditional Mid-Cycle is not expected for several months.  However, as with NSCAs, we are working on ways to do virtual assessments for the members.

In February, we told you about the work being done on the Request for Proposal (RFP) development phase of a Major Services Sourcing Initiative for an Engineering Partnership agreement (Engineering Services/Engineer of Choice).  The RFP has now been issued.  Bids are due in late June, after which we will coordinate a detailed two-phased evaluation to arrive at an award recommendation.  Jim Kitchens is working with key stakeholders to assemble the evaluation team based on the premise that commercial/technical input from all members is key to our success.  Recent feedback from our CNOs indicates that implementation of our fleetwide MMC agreements is starting to show great promise, and we expect a similar outcome for EOC.  We also just completed a whirlwind effort to develop long-term agreements on purchasing and converting Uranium Hexafluoride (UF6) into nuclear fuel that will save four of our members more than $7M.  Thanks to Bob Rose and Jim Kitchens for coordinating this with four of our members in just a few months!

Brad Vickery finalized the 2019 rebate numbers for the plants during this time.  The final rebate total was just under $2.3M, but as you know, these are only a small part of what the plants gain through their USA membership.

Another big change to our 2020 schedule because of the pandemic was our annual Executive Summit.  This year’s conference was scheduled for Huntington Beach, CA, but it had to be cancelled.  Jim Kitchens is working on the plans for the 2021 Winter and Executive conferences and currently USA plans to proceed with both conferences next year.

The Personnel Sharing plans for the spring Outage Season were also impacted by the pandemic.  In addition, the 2021 planning meeting had to be cancelled, but will be rescheduled later in the year.

As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Site Rep or any of the USA staff if you have ideas, suggestions, or complaints.  We are only as good as our members’ involvement and engagement.  Thank you all again for your support and engagement!