|
The
US
commercial nuclear plant fleet was designed between the 1960s and
1980s. The design engineers involved in these design activities with
Architect / Engineering (AE) firms and utilities have either already
retired or will retire within a few years. This means that the
pool of commercial nuclear plant design engineers with actual plant
design experience is very small and these individuals are about to
become extinct!
Nuclear utilities are currently involved in major capital projects, such
as extended power uprates (EPUs), which require a thorough understanding
of the plant design basis in order to efficiently and safely prepare
design modification analyses, mod packages, and license amendment
submittals. Often, these utilities rely on AE's and NSSS vendors to
perform most of the design engineering work associated with these large
capital projects. These AEs and NSSS vendors, however, are competing
for the same dwindling pool of design engineers and analysts to support
their projects. Competition forces these AE/NSSS firms to keep training
and mentoring of young engineers (if ANY) to a minimum to maintain their
rates at a reasonable level and maximize profits. On the regulatory
side, the NRC is now staffed with many young and inexperienced engineers
with little or no design background and only Regulatory Guides and SRPs
to go by. There are a lot of pitfalls in this working environment
picture just described.
My
name is Juan Cajigas. I have over 35 years experience in the commercial
nuclear power industry and for the last 20 years owned and operated
Applied Analysis Corp. (AAC) an engineering design and analysis firm.
Our staff is comprised of engineers whose engineering design and
analysis experience was gained in the actual design and analysis of PWRs
and BWRs in the 70s and 80s. Yes, you guessed it, we are old. Like
most senior engineers in your staff we are in our 50s and some even in
our 60s. AAC understands exactly how your plant was designed and the
basis and methods used in your FSAR safety analyses. We did not learn
this from books or looking at calculations prepared by others; we
actually performed the original design and analysis of many PWRs and
BWRs currently in operation. In the post-construction era, we have been
busy supporting projects such as design modifications, design basis
reconstitution, power uprates, and new generation reactor design to name
a few. Our clients include utilities, AEs, and NSSS vendors.
AAC’s core experience and expertise is in the
nuclear, mechanical, thermal hydraulic and radiological engineering
analysis of system and components. We prepare numerous Chapter 15
related analyses using codes such as GOTHIC, RELAP5, RADTRAD,
MicroShield, PIPE-FLO
and many old codes you may not recognize. Although I would like to
elaborate on this core experience, I prefer to cut to the chase and
quickly get to my point.
I
truly believe that if you have an experienced design and analysis
engineering staff (the level of expertise would vary depending on your
company objectives) you could:
1.
Avoid re-inventing the wheel and reduce engineering
costs.
More and more we see plants attempting to
engineer or re-engineer projects from scratch while the methods and
tools for those tasks were developed long ago. As complicated as we
think our plants are, we are just moving water, steam, and air around
within piping and inside concrete and steel buildings. Even the
principles of nuclear engineering were developed over 60 years ago. We
went to the moon using computers with less technology than your cell
phone. It is NOT that complicated, but unfortunately not all documented
in one place. A good knowledge of your plant design and how it was
developed can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars in
re-engineering work.
2.
Improve your consulting engineering management and
negotiations; reduce consulting costs.
You probably research before you buy that
new electronic gadget or car. Often, you know more than the salesman
yourself. The same should go with your dealings regarding engineering
consultants, mainly AE and NSSS vendors. Although budgets, priorities
and organizational goals could prevent you from performing lots of
engineering work in-house, knowledge is power and a good understanding
of the engineering methods used by these organizations will improve your
bargaining power and perhaps more importantly, insure that your review
of their deliverables is thorough and able to discover obvious
mistakes. Remember, the analysis or calculation you just received may
have been performed by an engineer younger than anyone currently on
staff and with far less knowledge of your plant. You can demand rework
from your consultant but you are ultimately responsible for their
deliverables as far as the NRC is concerned. Calculation mistakes, if
and when discovered by the regulatory staff, can result in costly
re-inspections and additional scrutiny. You cannot afford to have a
“blind leading the blind” situation in this case.
3.
Improve your regulatory communications; avoid costly
regulatory exposure.
As indicated earlier, the current NRC staff
is young. If your staff is equally young and inexperienced, you will be
the ball player and the NRC the umpire; keep in mind, the umpire wins
every time. On the other hand, if your staff is well versed in your
plant’s design basis and analysis methods, there is no need to agree to
reduced design margins or additional modifications if you can properly
defend your case. We have acted on a utility’s behalf in many of these
cases with great success. The costs associated with additional
modifications, increased inspections or frequency of inspections or
perhaps future modifications or engineering costs due to lost design
margins can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars or even
millions.
These are just a few of the advantages of
having an experienced design engineering staff at your plant. Having
established the fact that the pool of experienced design engineers is
small and dwindling every day, it makes sense to train some of your
staff to achieve this level of expertise, or near it. Unfortunately,
our current nuclear plant fleet is made of many one-of-a-kind designs
and the supporting documentation is often not readily available. In
short, the answers are not always “somewhere in the book.” Mentoring
can be an excellent medium to transfer this knowledge to your young
engineering staff. By working side by side with our experienced staff,
your young engineers can be mentored in these key design engineering
skills while at the same time completing design engineering projects
that you would have otherwise contracted for. At
AAC
we have mentored engineers in both our core engineering analysis skills,
thermal hydraulics and radiological engineering, while at the same time
getting them started in their own plant projects.
Please take time to consider engineering
mentoring as an alternative to the entire or part of your next
design/analysis engineering project; or even to gain/establish this
knowledge for improved decision making or future projects. Our core
experience allows us to provide engineering mentoring in the areas of:
·
Thermal Hydraulics
·
Radiological Engineering
·
Mechanical Engineering Analysis
In addition, our location near the home
office of a former
PWR/BWR
design A/E provides a core of recently retired engineers in the
following disciplines among many:
·
Electrical Engineering
·
I&C
Engineering
·
Mechanical Engineering
·
Piping Engineering
·
Structural Engineering
Mentoring sessions can
be conducted in our
Reading,
PA offices or in combined plant and AAC office locations.
Recent AAC mentoring
projects include:
·
Alternative Source Term (AST) Implementation using RADTRAD.
· Sub-compartment
Pressure and Temperature analysis using GOTHIC.
·
High Energy Line Break (HELB) Program Upgrade and associated EQ
implications.
· Normal
Operation Radioactive Release Calculations using GALE.
For more
information on how design engineering mentoring can improve your bottom
line please contact:
Juan
M. Cajigas, President
Applied Analysis Corp.
610-775-0272
jmcajigas@applied-analysis.com
|
