Good Afternoon, for those that I have not met, my name is Michael Bacon and I am the Superintendent, Simulator and Training Support, Grand Gulf Nuclear Station. I have been in this position nearly three years now but at the time of the up-rate, I had been in position only a few months when I was exposed to the status of this project. I have a strong Nuclear training Background but some weaknesses in the technical functions of the simulator. In our Company, Entergy, the Superintendent that owns the simulator also owns several other functions that compete for attention. Of Course the simulator is my main function, but when you are new and also supporting and ATV and a new IT, there are many other priorities.
Standard Year
• GE - BWR-6 – Moving to a 2 Yr Fuel Cycle – Every other year outage – Every other year License Exam – Average about 112 DRs per year
In a standard year for a BWR, we have some outage preparations for the Biennial outage, but, the focus is training and the license classes. As you may see from the slide, the year before the EPU was quite normal, with one major project beyond the EPU, which is the accelerated operations hiring. In the 2011/2012 window, we had two license classes and one non-license class in progress. This is already beyond the design for a single unit Entergy plant.
EPU Initial View
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Now lets look at the EPU
20,000 Foot View
• Software – 3898 Mwth to 4408 Mwth – GE Power Range Neutron Monitoring
• With an operable channel in the simulator
– New Primary BOP Model – Upgrades to several systems
• Hardware – New Turbine & Generator – New Feed Pumps – New MSRs – Upgrade Flow Control
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This is the 20,000 foot view. For the simulator, it is pretty straight forward; New BOP model, upgrades to reactor model, and New Power Range Neutron Monitoring. Most other stuff is meter scaling. The actualities are that the plant is getting a new turbine, new feed pumps, new Main Steam Re-heaters, and Really, a completely new heat balance cycle.
Turn Key Project!
• Shaw Construction has been awarded the Main Contractor Contract for the Turn Key Up rate
• This is a Single-Cycle Up rate – Never been done anywhere – Will take only 69 days!
• CTI is the Sub-contractor for the Simulator Upgrade
• All Training Materials and all procedures will be updated by a group subcontracted by Shaw
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The first meeting I went to on the project, the project manager for the simulator up-rate explained to me the wonderful benefits of a turn key project. Most importantly the up-rate had been planned with our workload in mind to prevent the addition of any work on my crew. In Fact, ALL training materials, and ALL procedures would be upgraded without needing a single instructor from my plant. Now this was March of 2011, which was about T-11 months to the EPU. But, on the surface, I was satisfied that with an Entergy assigned employee Project Manager, that my best interests were at least in the mix. CTI is the contractor that had completed a re-hosting for us in 2005 and my initial reaction was that we were probably not in bad shape.
T-8 Months to EPU
• The Math Doesn’t quite add up
– 2 Previous Instructor hired for procedures
– FAT contracted to CTI
– SAT contracted to CTI
– Requested schedule for Training materials
upgrade to plan the validation schedule
• Shifting to 09-09 validation standard
• Need to determine resources for outage
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We had meetings every month with a standard project agenda, actions assigned, and discussions on the scope and pitfalls of a project of this scope. However, with all of the other things going on with license classes in progress and the simulator being used on a 24/6 basis, there were many distractions and many times that discussions were not completed. This was the first meeting that gave me the feeling that we were not all on the same sheet of music.
T-5 Months
• Training Presented Plan to the Project Team for validations and testing
– First “Real” communication about the size of
the Site Acceptance Test and the resources necessary to accomplish the testing
– Project Team responded that the plan was beyond the scope of the up-rate
• First Inkling that Power Range Neutron Monitoring would not be approved before the shutdown
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At T-5, I presented a whitepaper that laid out the resources I thought would be necessary to support all of the site acceptance testing and it was not well received. The initial response was that it was beyond the scope of the project and I would have to go find the money to do such a complex testing regime. It seems that when the project was scoped, a previous Assistant Manager of Operations with some training experience was used to try and determine the scope of the simulator up-rate project. No actual simulator engineering or training management people were consulted during the original scoping that I could find out about.
T-4 through T-2 Months to EPU
• Scoping meetings – Spreadsheets of scenarios – Spreadsheets of tests for SAT
• Qualifications of the testing crew – Plant was beginning to let contracts for
SRO licensed or Certified people in outage positions
– Training was getting concerned about the ability to get qualified people to perform the SAT
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Over a 60 day period, there were many meetings to try to change the scope and explain the size of the testing that had to be done. The project believed that when they sub contracted the SAT to CTI, they thought they had transferred the responsibility to write and complete the testing. We tried to explain to the project that the author and the performer of the tests would have to be a licensed SRO or SRO Instructor Certified person. We explained that as far as Grand Gulf was concerned, that was a pretty small population and they would get sucked up for outage jobs pretty quickly.
T-2 Months to EPU
• Time for the SOS message – We were not
getting through to the project
– We were not sure the company understood the magnitude of the problem
EPU Implementation
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Now lets look at the EPU
Simulator Changes
• Primary BOP Model – Virtual affects every system – Re-spanning every meter – Full Site Acceptance testing had not be
done since 1987
• Testing Regimen – Rewrite Tests for current system status – Conduct tests – Correct DRs
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Ask yourself how long this type of testing takes. We used five SRO certified folks on 10 hour shifts 6 days per week for four weeks which is over 600 mhours in testing and writing DRs. A CTI engineer was on site to assist in clearing the DRs and we were pretty effective in clearing nearly 80% of all DRs within 60 days of the end of testing. The remainder however was the higher hanging fruit. The Simulator Configuration Review Board met every three weeks to evaluate what testing and training could be done since we still needed to perform JIT and we still had license classes to complete.
Deficiency Reports
• Plant routinely handles 100-120 per year – Mixed, but roughly 2/3 software 1/3
hardware
• 2012 DR load 732 DRs created and nearly 700 DRs have been closed
• Performance Indicator has been Red
since March 2012
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Today, the indicator is red, but we expect that we will achieve green in March, approximately one year after the beginning of the project.
Largest Challenges
• NRC Approval was not obtained before shutdown for PRNM – This required installing instrumentation – Two Startup Procedures
• Old CTLP • New EPU Power
– New EPU power was not achieved until September 2012
• Communicating the requirements to the project team
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Since the NRC had not approved the package before we shutdown, the plant had to install instrumentation in the vessel head to monitor Steam Dryer performance on the startup. This required us to show data for two months which caused huge interruptions in our normal routines such as Annual operator testing and Initial license classes.
Lesson to be Learned
• Once the Scope is identified, there is large resistance to change
• There must be people on the project team during scoping that has performed some of the maintenance being done
• We should have performed a sweep of old DRs to identify potential issues
Presenter
Presentation Notes
The original scoping of this project was done with an entirely different group of people and many of them had NO experience in a simulator beyond the evaluation of a candidate in the simulator. Had the simulator group been involved in the scoping, I believe that the team would have understood what the magnitude of a site acceptance test would be. In all of our old DRs, there were some things that had been analyzed away which once a full SAT was performed, now came back to the surface. Now we have to start all over again and make these things go away again.
