No new Areas of Concern, Station will continue to focus on precise procedure execution

Article Contact: Susquehanna Nuclear Operations Manager Matt Gray

Recently, under the watchful eye of the Evaluation Team from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), Susquehanna Steam Electric Station (SSES) Operators successfully completed their Crew Performance Evaluation (CPE) with no new Areas of Concern.

The debrief, received by members of the Station’s Senior Leadership Team, Operations and Operations Training teams, indicated that INPO’s Evaluation Team was very impressed with the engagement and the enthusiasm shown by Operations and members of Team Susquehanna as a whole.

“The INPO Evaluation Team provided us critical feedback in several areas where we may continue working to improve,” said Operations Manager Matt Gray. “While we’ll be able to demonstrate our knowledge and skills during the refueling and inspection outage at the end of March, the most important feedback we received from INPO was to continue working on the precise execution of our procedures every time.”

Coaching each other to ensure Susquehanna always uses its Focus on Five Human Performance tools will be the biggest factor in successful execution of our outage, said Matt.

“Team members talking to each other, sharing OE and coaching each other to always use our HUP tools is what will lead us to a safe and event-free outage,” said Matt. “If we do that as a team, the outage will be successful, and we’ll be well on our way to achieving our Strategic Objectives this year.”

Assistant Operations Manager-Shift Bob DiPietro is also extremely proud of the hard work, engagement and enthusiasm the Operations and Operations Training departments have been demonstrating.

“The Ops Training team, led by Scott Yokimcus, prepared months ahead to support the Operations team in the selection and validation of these challenging scenarios. The scenarios met INPO criteria promoting industry best performance,” said Bob. “The ownership of their performance, continued feedback, sharing OE and ideas, and the willingness to coach each other is what will ensure that we cultivate a culture of continuous improvement with sustained top quartile performance in the industry.”

“This is a very good start to our evaluation,” said Site-VP Ed Casulli. “If you look at our Station’s commitment to Nuclear Professional Behaviors, the use of training really enabled our people to improve their performance and it’s setting us up for a strong future with Operating crews who are prepared to handle any event.””Every member of the team that walks through the South Gatehouse each day plays a vital role in the success of the team,” said Matt. “If we are all committed to success, take personal ownership of our performance, work as a team to improve each day – and close our gaps – we will continue the improvement we have shown over the last 10 months. We have unbelievable talent at this Station. I have seen this team do amazing things and there is no reason we cannot be a top performing station in the industry—and stay there.”

INPO representatives will be onsite during the Unit 1 23rd Refueling and Inspection Outage this spring, as well as the Continuum Visit scheduled for June 2024.