Utilities Service Alliance (USA) member Team Susquehanna delivered its Unit 2 18th Refueling and Inspection Outage (U2 18RIO) safely, with no significant events, under dose, under budget and close to outage plan, coming in at 36.6 days, zero OSHA recordable injuries, zero site clock resets, and under personal contamination events and outage dose goal.

“I would like all of Team Susquehanna to be proud of what we accomplished during this refueling outage. There are always things we know can be done better and more efficiently, and we will continue to learn,” said Plant Manager Bob Franssen.  “The bottom line on this outage is that it was done safely, with strong human performance, low dose, great teamwork, and came in on time and under budget.”

“We executed a really strong Outage this year and we did so because Team Susquehanna was familiar with the schedule and they communicated with one another, minimizing open time between scheduled work. It kept us as close to the original schedule as possible,” said Outage Manager Joe Rodriguez. “Because of aggressive planning milestones, our initial outage schedule was published well in advance, several vertical and horizontal reviews were completed and senior leadership conducted healthy challenges that made certain the right work was executed this outage. I’m proud of the team for their contributions and their commitment to the schedule and to its safe execution.”
During the outage, major projects which Team Susquehanna and its supplemental work force executed successfully included:

• – Replacing 328 spent fuel assemblies, the performance of 1,869 moves which involved fuel and blade guides within the reactor core and spent fuel pools, as well as ‘fuel sipping’ which helped us to identify and remove U2’s first fuel defect bundle in more than 40 reactor years
• – Inspection and repair of reactor jet pumps
  – Replacement of three feedwater heaters
  – Completion of the ‘C’ low pressure turbine blade modifications
  – Replacement of the Turbine Building roof
  – Completion of U2’s Hardened Containment Vent System Project
• – Required maintenance and inspection of U2’s cooling tower
  – Execution of dozens of required tests and inspections
  – Replacement of several control rod drives
  – Remained safe during Winter Storm Stella and the resulting 2’ of snow received on site within one 24 hour period

“We experienced fewer emergent work issues this year compared to previous outages which kept our focus on the schedule and work at hand,” said Rodriguez. “The quality of work which was executed in previous outages also helped keep us from discovering degraded equipment conditions across the board.”

Another success noted this year? Increased peer-to-peer observations by Team Susquehanna (200+) and by the Outage Standards Team (a record 3,300+) helped keep Team Susquehanna safe by checking to make sure proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was being worn, that appropriate pre job briefs were conducted, and that rigorous work behaviors were demonstrated across the station as expected helped to keep Team Susquehanna safe during outage work this year.

Congratulations, Team Susquehanna, on an exceptional performance during this outage.