Mothers in Nuclear: A Spoonful of Nuclear

The following guest post was submitted by Elizabeth McAndrew-Benavides, NEI's Senior Manager, Workforce Policy and Programs.

Shannon Rafferty-Czincila is neither a doctor nor nurse. But she is a mother of three, a nuclear energy professional and a local leader who is supporting advanced health care in her community.

Shannon Rafferty-Czincila

Shannon works as the license renewal lead at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and is the Chair of NEI’s License Renewal Implementation Working Group. Her job is to document how her company's nuclear power plants will continue to meet federal safety requirements if they are approved for continued operation beyond their original 40 year licenses. “Right now I believe that running our current plants is a good option to help support our growing need for energy,” said Rafferty-Czincila. “By obtaining a new license for a nuclear power plant we are ensuring that we will have clean, safe and reliable power for many more years.”

Rafferty-Czincila volunteers her time with the Friends of Einstein Medical Center Montgomery auxiliary. "It is important to me that my neighbors and my family have access to the best medical facilities available," said Shannon. "Now that the company I work for has decided to extend the operation of our fleet of nuclear power plants, my family will be living in the area for a long time."

Shannon’s volunteer work with the Friends of Einstein Medical Center Montgomery has benefited from her leadership experiences in the nuclear energy industry. She has been recognized for her leadership capabilities with her recent election to vice president of the Friends of Einstein Medical Center Montgomery auxiliary. Einstein Medical Center Montgomery is a new hospital that's part of the Einstein Health Care network.

The auxiliary helps support the hospital through community outreach, special projects and fundraising. Shannon believes that the auxiliary has a responsibility to reach as many people as possible and she looks forward to improving the health and well-being of the region.

"I wanted to get more involved in the community and I wanted my children to know that they need to give back to the area that they live in. I believe that parents need to be positive role models for their children," said Rafferty-Czincila.

When describing why she enjoys working as a nuclear license renewal professional and volunteering with the local auxiliary Rafferty-Czincila said: “I like the fact that I am working on projects that positively impact others. I find my work in the nuclear industry and the auxiliary to be rewarding.”

Shannon is one of the Mothers in Nuclear dedicated to her community and to ensuring the safe and reliable operations of our country's nuclear plants.

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Milestone Alert: 10,000 Young Professionals in Nuclear and Counting

Major news, nukes! In less than 15 years of existence, NAYGN has registered 10,000 members. That means thousands of young, energized and influential nuclear professionals dedicated to shaping our industry's future. Exciting stuff, I know. Take a look at the press release below:

The North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NAYGN) is celebrating a milestone achievement –the organization has registered over 10,000 unique members since its inception.


“We have now become the premier leadership development activity for the nuclear energy industry. With so many opportunities at the local, regional and continental level, we provide some of the first opportunities for young professionals to practice their leadership skills,” says Past President Elizabeth McAndrew-Benavides. NAYGN started with seven members who were passionate about nuclear science and technology, and it continues now with 10,000 members who share their same passion. The organization remains a strong pro-nuclear voice, and has now become a respected place for young employees to develop their professional skills.

NAYGN was created in 1999, at a time when utilities were looking towards license renewal of existing facilities. With the prospect of extended plant operation, the nuclear industry recognized the need to expand the workforce demographic to include more young professionals. Many of the pioneers who helped develop the industry were retiring and a new generation was needed in the workforce.

Enthusiasm is one of the defining characteristics of NAYGN members, and enthusiasm has certainly aided the rapid growth of the organization. Past NAYGN Officer Michael Stuart reflected the early years of NAYGN, “During the time when I was Public Information Officer, NAYGN was leading the charge in putting a youthful and enthusiastic face on the re-emergence of nuclear power in the United States. For the first time in a generation, we were holding pro-nuclear rallies all over the United States - in Virginia, Illinois, and on the capitol steps of Jackson, Mississippi… We were the voice of a new generation in nuclear and we were being heard and well-received.”

NAYGN was established in 1999 and now has 110 local chapters with more than 10,000 members. For more information about NAYGN, please visit www.naygn.org.

Congratulations to NAYGN and all of its members. I look forward to seeing the positive impact their advocacy and leadership will have on our industry.

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Shift in Clinton Plant Refueling Cycle Increases Efficiency

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.

Eight-time TIP Award winner Jim Tusar is no stranger to ambitious projects. His most recent, which earned this year’s GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Award, is no exception.

The industry standard is to schedule refueling and maintenance outages once every 18 months or two years, but Tusar and his team at Exelon Nuclear pioneered an annual outage schedule at the Clinton Power Station in Illinois.

“The idea came from acknowledging the value of [the facility] was decreasing due to the fact we had such high fuel costs, and at the same time power prices were decreasing,” said Tusar, Exelon Nuclear’s manager of nuclear fuels. “We knew that we had to do something to improve the asset value of Clinton, and the main thing to attack would be the fuel, because we can’t control the electricity prices.”

More than 40 percent of the reactor’s fuel needed to be replaced every two years.

“It’s not efficient. You’re not utilizing fuel well in that scenario,” Tusar said.

The Exelon team conducted studies with their fuel vendor, Global Nuclear Fuel, and found that an annual outage cycle would cut costs significantly.

The new schedule will alternate the typical refueling and maintenance outage with a short (13-day) outage dedicated to refueling only. The refuel-only outage is achievable because of a new core design strategy that minimizes the number of fuel moves, leaving some fuel assemblies in the same location from one cycle to the next.

The team also needed to determine the best time of year to schedule the annual outage.
Exelon owns and operates 16 other reactors, so “we don’t want to overlap with any other outages. It’s a resource concern,” Tusar said. Nor did the company want to schedule an outage for summer, when power demands are highest and replacement power is costly.

The path to an annual fuel cycle is still unfolding. Clinton will begin a transitional 18-month fuel cycle this October, which will lead to a May 2015 start date for the first annual outage cycle.

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New Welding Process Saves Calvert Cliffs $17.5 Million

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.

The staff at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear energy facility developed a new welding process that not only has improved efficiency at the plant but also saved millions of dollars.

The project earned a team from the plant the B. Ralph Sylvia Best of the Best Award, which honors the highest achievement among all TIP Award winners.



Led by Lennie Daniels, a senior project manager at Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, the team streamlined the welding required to install pressurizer lower head heater nozzles and level nozzles.

The results of the new process, known as “Mini-ID Temper Bead Welding,” are significant. For example, the volume of weld material needed was cut by 90 percent, and the time spent welding one installation dropped from 18 hours to four hours. Putting the new welding process in practice at Calvert Cliffs ultimately saved the company $17.5 million and 583 critical path hours during its maintenance outage.

Before replacing nozzles in 119 high-radiation-dose locations, the team put in plenty of time up front to optimize the entire process. With the welding to be performed on a platform eight feet in diameter 30 feet in the air, the team at the Maryland facility rehearsed the procedures on a full-scale mockup.

“It was while practicing the entire thing from start to finish that we could find those little … kinds of things that you’d never, ever think of,” said Daniels.

Daniels cited solutions like building a stairwell so that crews didn’t need to carry heavy tools up and down a ladder and changing small components of a work platform to make it maneuverable.

“It was the little user-friendly enhancements that went a long way to help us be successful,” he said.

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Bill Gates Calls for More R&D Funding for Energy Technologies

This week the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) held its third annual energy innovation summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss the future of energy technologies in the U.S. marketplace. Among the impressive lineup of speakers was a notable nuclear energy advocate Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and of the nuclear startup company TerraPower.

Although I wasn’t able to attend the conference in person (I found out too late—bummer!), I followed along on Twitter using the #eis12 hashtag to see what nuggets were said about the future of energy.
In a panel with Secretary Chu, Gates said that research and development for energy technologies is “greatly underfunded.”

"People underestimate how far away we are," Gates said. "That's partly why we can end up underfunding the innovative work that needs to go on."

Boosting funding for research doesn't guarantee that there will be a technological breakthrough, but it does improve the chances of speeding up progress. Still, Gates said, the failure rates of green-technology startups will be well over 90 percent.

In order to get at least 10 to 20 technologies to succeed in the marketplace, Gates called for at least doubling the current budget for R&D to encourage the thousands of companies that may be needed to try their hands at developing the next big energy innovation.
He also said that it’s important that the United States continue developing cheaper, cleaner sources of energy if we want to help impoverished people around the world:

“If you look at improvement in the human condition, it really does have to do with energy. If you want to improve the livelihoods of the poorest 1 billion people in the world, having cheap energy [is a way to do it]. Can they afford transportation, fertilizer, lighting? The answer is no, without cheap energy, they stay stuck where they are.”

As part of his commitment to developing clean energy, Gates reconfirmed his support for nuclear power as a viable, safe, emission-free energy source. Smart Planet explains:

“Unless you can take hydrocarbons and take extreme [carbon] capture-and-storage, then you’ve got nuclear as the one left [that provides baseload power],” he said. “I think we should bet on all of these, and in each area we should have ideally hundreds of companies betting on them.”

Continuing to improve nuclear energy technologies to make them even safer will still be important, Gates said. Inga’s Live Blog explains:

“If you need humans to do something, that’s not a good design,” [said Gates]. Gates said nuclear isn’t dead. Next-gen nuclear plants will no doubt have safety procedures that don’t need people figuring out which switch to flip to stop a meltdown.

Developing game-changing energy technologies will take time however, Gates explains, due to the necessary research and testing that is involved.

The problem with using IT and telecommunications as models for innovating in clean energy is that people underestimate the difficulty of the scientific work needed and how much time is needed for innovations to become adopted, Gates said.

Beyond the time to research, the energy industry is subject to sometimes burdensome regulatory frameworks, which can also delay progress in the field, Gates said:

“Whatever technology they use and how it’s priced for consumers is determined on a regulatory basis,” he said. “It’s very different than having a software company or even a chip factory where your innovation cycles are every two or three years and your dependence on government policy is very low.”

For more information on some of the current challenges facing the energy industry, watch the panel with Gates and Secretary Chu from the summit. For more information on the ARPA-E summit, check out CNET’s coverage.

Photo: Bill Gates at the ARPA-E 2012 summit. Credits: AFP/Getty Images.

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Resurgence in American Nuclear Industry To Start in Ga., Says Energy Chief

In case you missed the tweets from @SouthernCompany or @EnergyPressSec yesterday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu  toured the site where two new reactors are being built at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Ga. Reconfirming his commitment to nuclear energy, the Nobel Laureate spoke to the more than 500 workers already on site on the need to build new nuclear plants to create jobs for American workers and boost U.S. competitiveness.

“In his State of the Union address, President Obama outlined a blueprint for an American economy that is built to last and develops every available source of American energy,” said Secretary Chu. “Nuclear power is an important part of that blueprint. The work being done in Georgia and at research organizations like Oak Ridge National Laboratory is helping restore American leadership in the global race for the nuclear energy jobs of tomorrow.”

Just how many new jobs is Secretary Chu talking about? Business Week says:

About 1,700 workers are already on the job site and plant managers say that number will grow to nearly 5,000 at the peak of construction. Once the completed units go online, they will employ about 800 permanent workers.

Those numbers only capture the direct jobs from the project, but indirectly, Business Week explains that constructing the two new reactors means a lot more people coming to the area, consuming more goods and services at local businesses. Take, for example, Allen DeLaigle:

"Plant Vogtle has pretty well saved Burke County," said Allen DeLaigle, who owns and manages an RV park with his twin brother about 4 miles from the nuclear plant.

Since site preparation ramped up for the new units, DeLaigle's park has filled about 90 of its 151 spaces with RVs and campers owned by workers coming in from other states such as Alabama and Mississippi, West Virginia and Ohio.

Or Robin Baxley:

Robin Baxley, owner of a Waynesboro office supply store, added two new employees to keep up with deliveries of pens, paper, marker boards and thumb drives to the modular offices set up on the construction site. Her business also supplied the cubicles, desks and file cabinets for many of those temporary offices

"They helped us make it through the economic downturn," Baxley said. "Office furniture is not the first thing people buy when they can hardly make payroll."

The project also will create approximately 35,000 jobs for suppliers and manufacturers, which is why groups like the National Association of Manufacturers wholeheartedly support the project:

Manufacturers use one-third of the energy consumed in the Unites States, so building new reliable sources of energy is essential to our competitiveness. Building new nuclear power plants also means the creation of quality jobs for Americans at a time when we need them the most. The Vogtle plant alone will create 5,000 new jobs and will have a tremendous positive impact for the many jobs in the nuclear energy supply chain. 

The amount of jobs this project is creating has not gone unnoticed by the public. In fact, on the day of the announcement, I took a phone call from a member of the public asking where he could find information online to apply for a job. I also saw comments like this one on Twitter:

If the overall goal is to create new jobs, make America more competitive and invest in an emission-free, domestic energy source, then this is the way to do it, said Secretary Chu on the tour:

“America has the opportunity to lead the world in clean energy technologies and to provide a foundation for our future prosperity. What you are doing here at Vogtle will help us compete in the global clean energy race and provide domestic, clean power to U.S. homes.”

During his visit to the site, Secretary Chu announced a funding opportunity of up to $10 million for research and development toward advanced nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technologies and also announced that the agency will be putting together an internal working group—chaired by Peter Lyons—to recommend a nuclear waste strategy to the secretary by the summer.

Continuing with his busy week, today the secretary testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee on the agency’s fiscal year 2013 budget request. (See the committee’s archived webcast and Secretary Chu’s testimony for more information.)

Photo: Southern Co.’s Tom Fanning and Energy Secretary Steven Chu on a tour of the Plant Vogtle site. Photo courtesy of Southern Co.

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