USA has completed four plant status control assessments resulting in the identification of five strengths and twelve recommendations for improvements.  These ideas and the help provided were driven by the outstanding industry and host peers we have had on the assessment teams.  Tim Borgen of Xcel started us off by acting as host peer at Prairie Island assisted by Chris Ward of South Texas as industry peer.  This pilot refined our standards and assessment approaches.  Tim Borgen then furthered this improvement acting as industry peer for the next assessment at Susquehanna.  Susquehanna’s Darvin Duttry developed an outstanding plan as host peer.  With Tim’s help we also were able to make meaningful recommendations in areas outside status control adding value to the assessment.  Next we went to DC Cook with Dan Etheridge as host peer and Rob DiPietro of Susquehanna as industry peer.  This team not only assessed status control but also made meaningful recommendations in other areas while also completing benchmarking for Susquehanna.  Most recently, an assessment was completed at Cooper Nuclear Station with Phil Martin as host peer and Travis Kruckenberg of Xcel as industry peer.  Thanks to Phil we hit the ground running on Monday and Travis also made other helpful recommendations.  This assessment also involved every USA station as we got benchmarking information within a days’ notice from every USA station on control room peer checks in support of a recommendation the team developed.

This work by our peers has been invaluable and each assessment keeps getting better.  Next up is Columbia and we have received information from the station earlier than ever thanks to work by host peer Jeff Rex and the station.  We are looking to factor in recent lessons learned from last year’s 17-5 assessments, a recent Fermi INPO evaluation, and a WANO review at DC Cook to strengthen our efforts going forward.