News

The Pandemic created a substantial impact to our training efforts including one alliance member having an initial license exam delayed three months due to NRC travel restrictions and four alliance members having to reschedule INPO Accreditation Team Visits (ATVs).  In addition, many alliance members had to temporarily suspend or reschedule training as part of utility Pandemic response.

Winston Churchill once famously said, “An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”  Our alliance members have been resourceful during this difficult time.  Members have had to figure out how to conduct training within social distancing, improved cleaning, and mask wearing guidelines.  For example, Susquehanna has moved initial license training to a larger classroom 20 miles from the plant and South Texas has split its classes.  Susquehanna, South Texas, Comanche Peak, and Fermi conducted access training deploying a range of mitigations.  Xcel deployed industry leading UV-C equipment for disinfecting their simulators.  Members share their approaches on a frequent basis and for example Xcel’s use of UV-C equipment lead to purchases by Columbia, South Texas, and Susquehanna.  Columbia provided a UV-C unit to EPRI to support testing for the industry.  Members also are taking lessons learned from Fermi’s outage experience in planning for fall outages.

In addition, members have used this difficulty as an opportunity to pursue distance learning options.  Examples include using WebEx for RP training at DC Cook, ERO training using Microsoft Teams at Cooper, using Zoom for SRO management certification class at Xcel, purchasing 60 laptops to enable distance learning at South Texas, and purchasing hardware and piloting distance learning in initial license operator training at Susquehanna.

Last, USA just completed support as an ATV team member for an Industry First Remote ATV at Dresden.  Participation on this ATV provided insight into new INPO ATV approaches but also into remote observations and other aspects INPO may use to complete our upcoming ATVs.  This experience will help with five upcoming USA ATV readiness reviews.