News

The combined USA / STARs Mid-Cycle Self-Assessment (MCSA) staffing support process has had another busy year in 2024 supporting MCSAs at eight participating stations. We started off the year at Columbia followed by Monticello, Palo Verde, STP and Comanche Peak, with Fermi, Wolf Creek and Cook remaining for 2024. We continue to staff our MCSAs primarily through the efforts of our monthly MCSA Team call participants. MCSAs are a great opportunity to get folks from your stations out in the industry to see how other stations are doing things and to bring ideas back to their home stations. Looking ahead to 2025, Cooper, Diablo Canyon, Prairie Island and Susquehanna are all slated for MCSAs. We are working to establish the dates and team member requests so we can start the process of staffing our teams. Thanks again to our USA Member stations and our partners at STARs for their continued support!

Shifting gears to Nuclear Safety Culture Assessments (NSCAs), it was another busy year for USA Member and non-USA Member NSCAs. We conducted or have NSCAs scheduled at Xcel, Cooper, STP, Fermi and Columbia for our member stations and for the non-USA members, we conducted NSCAs at River Bend, PSEG, Oak Ridge National Labs and Paragon Energy Solutions. Regarding Paragon Energy Solutions, one of our USA Supply Chain Partners, this is the second time we have conducted an NSCA at Paragon using our industry-leading NSCA process. Paragon Energy Solutions is setting the standard for ensuring their staff has the same nuclear safety culture as the operating nuclear power plants they provide materials and services to. I applaud Paragon’s commitment to a strong nuclear safety culture and look forward to continuing our valued relationship with Paragon.

If you would like to participate in a NSCA, please email Alec McGalliard or contact your USA Site Representative. Participating in a NSCA is an outstanding developmental opportunity for individual contributors, supervisors and managers to immerse themselves in the Ten Traits of a Healthy Nuclear Safety Culture.

Looking ahead to 2025, we are planning to conduct NSCAs at the following stations:

• Cook
• Susquehanna
• Comanche Peak
• TVA (Browns Ferry, Sequoyah, Watts Bar, TVA Corporate)- projected
• Wolf Creek – projected

The USA NSCA Process continues to be viewed as the Gold Standard for how to evaluate Nuclear Safety Culture which continues to be of the utmost importance to the long-term success of our industry.