News

USA Drone, Robotic, and Submersible team saves members time and money using new equipment to complete plant activities safely

Author: Brad Vickery

The USA Drone, Robotic, and Submersible team has been in place for several months and are making some real progress through utilization of this equipment.  Many plants have already been seeing early success and savings in not only money, but also dose reductions, time savings, and less risk to the plant and personnel.  The Team...

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Special Announcement – USA Announces Partnership with Rodger Dean Duncan for Change-Friendly Implementation Training

Author: USA Communication

USA is excited to announce our affiliation with Dr. Rodger Dean Duncan in providing access to his new CHANGE-friendly IMPLEMENTATION online course. For those of you who don’t know Rodger, he has had a long-standing relationship with USA and the U.S. nuclear industry and was the individual who introduced Crucial Conversations training to us all....

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ARM Reaches Major Milestone and Announces Expansion Opportunity

Author: USA Communication

USA’s Advanced Remote Monitoring & Diagnostics Services Project (ARM) represents a one-of-a-kind industry initiative. In partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, ARM helps reduce power plants’ operating costs through the application of advanced technologies. As part of the project’s three-year mission, Luminant’s Power Optimization Center (POC), recently announced the successful implementation of full-scale 24x7...

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Spend and Rebate Forecasting

Author: Brad Vickery

The new Spend and Rebate Forecasting process implemented this year is in its final quarter of review and input by our Plant Forecasters.  This estimated supplier spend for Q4 will be used to calculate the year-end rebate amounts by supplier and member.  Looking back, I was cautiously optimistic as DevonWay was developing the software system...

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Executive Spotlight – December 2020

Author: Brad Vickery

Remember the Material Cost Reduction (MCR) project?  Well I am happy to report MCR is alive and well at our member stations.  I remember a face-to-face meeting in year one of the project back in 2017 and Tim Rausch, Susquehanna CNO and USA BOD chairman, asked me how we are planning to institutionalize the tools...

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Personnel Sharing in a Pandemic

Author: Tim Donovan

The Personnel Sharing Program is designed to provide many benefits for the participating plants.  The Borrowing Participants obtain experienced personnel at a reasonable and value-added cost, using other utility personnel results in a more experienced work force than those hired from commercial sources.  In most cases, this results in either less personnel required to complete...

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The Devil is in the Detail? – Training Update

Author: John Tripoli

One definition for the saying "the devil is in the detail" is that plans or actions that seem sound must be carefully examined, because minor details can end up causing major, unforeseen problems.  When it comes to initial operations license training there are many, many details. In 2021 and 2022 the NRC and industry will...

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Executive Spotlight – August 2020

Author: Jim Kitchens

If you are old enough to remember baseball great Reggie Jackson, as I am, you might also recall that he liked to refer to himself as “Mr. October” based on his prolific performances in postseason. Another term used to refer to Jackson was “The Straw that Stirs the Drink” because he was the guy that...

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Parts Quality Initiative (PQI) Project Plan Summary

Author: Brad Vickery

The Parts Quality Initiative (PQI) provided by Exelon PowerLabs (EPL) has been available to the industry for the past 16 years.  Development of the USA project plan is for each of the members to asses their parts risk and determine if they should proceed with identification and testing of critical parts to prevent parts quality...

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Thank you to Jesse Smith

Author: Sarah Blaufuss

It was May of 2011 when USA first embarked on a coordinated response to the challenges of Cyber Security – over nine years ago!  Jesse Smith, an industry leader, was brought on board to oversee the project.  None of us realized at that time the challenges we would encounter as we all worked to get...

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