With the fall season comes the beginning of another refueling outage season for Utilities Service Alliance (USA) fleet members. This fall, Prairie Island Unit 2, Cook Unit 2 and Hope Creek will begin refueling outages and look to capitalize on the lessons learned from this past spring’s refueling outages that were captured by the USA Outage Excellence Team (OET).

According to OET Assistant Team Lead Dick Ehr from Columbia, there were five key lessons learned including schedule fidelity and quality, work package quality, fast track projects, first of a kind projects or evolutions and valve team efficiencies.

“USA fleet members will also continue to focus on protected equipment strategies that emphasize the equipment we rely on for decay heat removal during outages,” said Ehr. “We need to insure both station and supplemental workers aware of the systems we are dependent upon to supply and support decay heat removal functions. Everyone needs to recognize when conflicts or unexpected conditions may challenge those systems and reinforce the proper standards for working on or near protected equipment.”

The OET has worked hard the past few months to make sure USA members are ready for their fall refueling outages. USA fleet members will provide support through peer checks on how lessons learned from loss of decay heat removal events have been incorporated and through on-site observations and oversight during outage execution.

As with all refueling outages, the OET will continue to share lessons learned to improve outage performance moving forward.

Prairie Island’s new steam generators arriving via barge for their fall refueling outage.