NEI Nuclear Notes

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. This year’s Westinghouse Combustion Engineering Award went to a gargantuan project— NextEra Energy completed the largest extended power uprate project in history, adding more than 700 megawatts of additional generating capacity across four reactors in Florida and two in Wisconsin. With more than 30 million hours worked to complete the uprate, NextEra’s project called on a workforce of thousands, an economic boon to the communities that host the facilities. Terry Jones, vice president of nuclear power uprates, stressed the importance of instilling in the workers the nuclear energy industry’s safety cul...

NEI’s Top Industry Practice Awards recognize innovation in the nuclear energy industry. Presented at NEI’s annual conference, the awards honor accomplishments that help the industry improve safety, streamline processes and increase efficiency. In a special series of articles this week, our publication Nuclear Energy Overview highlights the challenges and successes of five winners. Rachel Doss’ team at Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear energy facility in South Carolina earned the 2013 AREVA Vendor Award, but its project—developing and implementing guidelines for inspecting and evaluating pressurized water reactor internals—was many years in the making. Rather than scheduling reactor internal inspections over multiple refueling outages, Duke’s winning team performed one of the industry’s largest-ever reactor vessel inspections, examining more than 6,500 reactor components during one outage at the Oconee 1 reactor. Its scope required planning with vendors, performing numerous risk ass...

The Anderson (S.C.)Independent Mail has the news : U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] stood in the welcome center of Duke Energy’s Oconee Nuclear Station and said he had learned something new about his hometown nuclear plant. “I didn’t know how easy it is to shut down,” Graham said. “There’s one button they can press and it drops the fuel rods. With one button, they can shut down the reactor within a second.” There’s the clean energy angle: At stake, Graham said, is a clean energy source for future generations of Americans. Wind and solar power, he said, can’t replace the coal-fired plants that dominate the energy production landscape today, but nuclear can. And the economic angle: Graham also underlined the station’s role in the local economy, as it has a $90 million payroll and has paid $27 million in property taxes to Oconee County. About 1,500 people work regularly at the plant, said Richard Freudenberger, the plant’s regulatory support manager. Another 2,0...