News

As we rapidly approach year’s end and bid adieu to 2023, perhaps the time is right to take a moment and reflect upon our accomplishments and also look ahead to the coming new year.

From a financial perspective, we are finishing 2023 with a very solid balance sheet with revenues and member rebates exceeding anything previously experienced. Key contributors to this success was the revenue from several non-member Nuclear Safety Culture Assessments and expanded use of USA’s Supplier Contracts which resulted in driving our forecasted rebates to our highest level ever.

Taking the form of expanded resource sharing, adoption of digital technologies and strengthened collaboration through crowdsourcing of common challenges and potential solutions, innovation was a cross-cutting theme in 2023.  This was led through the many efforts of our member-sponsored teams including: Shared Tools and Equipment, Drones and Robotics, Advanced Remote Monitoring and IdeaScale. Through these efforts, we have acquired new operating experience, shared best practices and created new competencies and capabilities across participating utilities.

Looking ahead to 2024, a number of new initiatives will be rolling out to include:

• Outage Coordination Working Group: This group will recommend strategies to increase efficiency and effectiveness of outage support and resource sharing across member utilities.
• Review of improvements from INPO 19-003 “Staying on Top”: Led by the utility’s Site Representatives, this effort will assess the effectiveness of actions previously implemented at the stations, identify strengths and recommend improvement opportunities where needed.
• Nuclear Resilience Initiative Team: With the energy sector fundamentally transforming to combat climate change while integrating intermittent renewables, the nuclear industry is being called upon to withstand and adapt to extreme events and changes in the environment. Our team will review emerging industry guidelines, assess current capabilities and make recommendations for sustaining nuclear resiliency.
• Going Forward Initiative: This effort will focus on delivering even more value from many of our standing Core Teams including Operations, Engineering, Work Management, Outage, Training and Maintenance.

In addition to the above, the DOE-sponsored Advanced Remote Monitoring project will deploy our new shared services technology platform, NuSuite, complete plant-level demonstrations and deploy new cloud services capabilities for all participating members.

Lastly, please mark your calendars and make plans to attend our two major conferences in 2024:

2024 Winter Conference, January 23 – 25, 2024, Charleston, South Carolina. This will be a great opportunity to learn firsthand about the implementation of dozens of key contracts at your station, meet the suppliers involved and discuss opportunities for further expanding savings and efficiency gains.

2024 USA Nuclear Generator and Supplier Executive Summit, June 24-28, 2024, Naples, Florida. Our theme this year is “Nuclear Resiliency in the Digital Revolution.” Registration will open, in March 2024.

In closing, I would like to extend congratulations to everyone that made 2023 a huge success. This includes our member utilities, supplier partners and the staff here at USA. It takes an entire team to achieve success and looking forward, we’ve got the “right stuff” to tackle the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Here’s to an extraordinary year and an even more extraordinary future…!

Clint Carter – Director, Fleet Modernization