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For more than 20 years, the Utilities Service Alliance (USA) has been helping its members maximize refueling outages with ready access to industry expertise, best practices and skilled craft workers.

Currently two of seven USA plants have units in refueling outages. They are not only replacing used fuel, but also undertaking a large number of maintenance projects and plant Inspections that can only occur while units are shut down for refueling.

Planning the work and executing it on time are crucial to outage success. Early in the process, USA fleet members get the support of USA’s Outage Core Peer Team, which shares lessons learned and improvement efforts helping stations move towards more standardized fleet process and guidance.

“As an example,” says Dick Ehr, USA’s Corporate Functional Area Manager (CFAM) for Outage. “Xcel Nuclear adopted Emergent Work process changes from Columbia, which paid dividends early in a Prairie Island outage.”

USA members benefit from independent reviews of their Shutdown Safety Plans by USA’s Outage Team and Decay Heat Removal Project Team. Industry peers support an independent review of station risk management and contingency planning.

Ehr notes that station needs change as an outage grows closer and USA responds with peer reviews and Outage Readiness assessments. For example, USA responded to Prairie Island’s request for an Outage Assist Review at T-5 to look closely at how station outage prep activities integrated with the station’s overall improvement efforts.

“A standalone plant would have to develop these resources on its own,” Ehr says. “Having the USA outage team available and having the right expertise available gives station staff the flexibility to spend time on other outage tasks.”

USA is there when it’s time to execute an outage as well with the resource sharing – including both personnel and equipment – industrial safety observations and Weekly Outage Calls during the “outage seasons” of fall and spring.
Outages generally require large numbers of supplemental workers with specific skills and this is where USA’s personnel sharing program gets particularly high marks.

“I have had the pleasure of hosting USA Mechanics from all across the country to assist with our refuel outages,” notes Tom Gregg, a 20-year maintenance veteran at Fermi 2. “In my opinion USA personnel sharing is a tremendous value because of their specific experience with nuclear plant equipment and familiarity with our policies, procedures and standards. In outage planning meetings I have told our management that one USA mechanic is more valuable than three supplemental contractors.”

USA is an alliance of six utilities operating seven nuclear power stations including Columbia, Comanche Peak, Fermi, Monticello, Prairie Island, Susquehanna and South Texas. Combined, they generate more than 12,000 megawatts of energy. In addition to administering a network of more than 60 nuclear suppliers, USA helps its members leverage their combined resources, talent and expertise to serve their customers with clean, safe, reliable and cost-efficient energy. It is on the web at www.usainc.org.