Records broken during RFO 9 set new
standards of teamwork for the industry

Public Service Electric & Gas’ (PSEG) Hope Creek
rises from a man-made island in southwest New Jersey, providing energy, a major source of employment, and substantial economic activity for a tri-state region that includes five counties in South Jersey, parts of Delaware, and Pennsylvania.

The plant’s success is vital to an area whose families, children, and businesses have relied on Hope Creek’s contributions to a thriving community. “We are proud of the economic opportunity we provide,” said Harry Keiser, CNO and president, PSEG Nuclear. “However, we never lose sight of the fact that our first and primary responsibility to our neighbors is to operate our facilities in accord with the highest standards of safety and reliability. We will never be satisfied with anything less.”

When the scheduled Refueling Outage Nine (RFO 9) began at Hope Creek, safety and reliability were the major emphasis, with a determined focus on achieving new goals for higher capacity factor and outage efficiency.

In fact, long before the breaker was opened, PSEG and Framatome Technologies (FTI), the primary contractor, committed that Hope Creek’s RFO 9 would leave a lasting impact and become a new standard for teamwork in the industry. On Wednesday, May 24th, 2000 at 5:51 p.m. RFO 9 ended with a duration of 32 days, 18 hours—15 days better than the plant’s previous best, ranking Hope Creek in the industry’s Top Quartile (a benchmark for exceptional performance) for duration and safety. “Top quartile performance is much more than just a buzzword. It’s safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness through people,” remarked Keiser.

“The new levels of leadership, partnership and teamwork are testaments to the quality of this outage and a hallmark for our future. I am very proud of the impact we are making on our organization, company and industry. I truly believe our accomplishments for this outage have been remarkable. RFO 9 has clearly been our safest outage ever - our number one priority. I am grateful to everyone— associates and contractors, for this achievement. We have again proven that by focusing on safety in everything we do, we can produce break through results.” The achievements of RFO 9 required the tireless efforts of PSEG, FTI, and other vendors as they combined skills to meet an ambitious goal. FTI’s role was crucial in establishing new levels of planning and efficiency from the beginning.

Kurt Krueger, Hope Creek outage manager for PSEG, said, “Any outage has challenges. What made this outage different early on, is that FTI and PSEG decided not to refer to problems as problems, but to treat them as opportunities. PSEG had their best people on the job, and FTI had their best people on the job. So we had a very strong team in place. Working as a team, we resolved “opportunities” quickly and got back on schedule.”

From reactor disassembly through dry-tube and internal inspections, control-rod drive (CRD) exchange, refueling and reassembly, PSEG and FTI maintained their focus. And the results speak for themselves. Throughout the outage “best performance” records were broken, especially in the FTI-managed refueling area, a key to the success of RFO 9. On May 17, PSEG Outage Management declared that FTI was no longer critical path and recognized FTI’s efforts and the outstanding performance of the refueling crew.

At the Friday, May 19 Plan-of-the-Day meeting, PSEG affirmed FTI’s Outage Management for their outstanding performance and ability to respond to emergent work. In addition, the ALARA organization recognized FTI for their significant contribution to reducing radiation exposure. Krueger declared, “We beat our original outage dose goal. And we were the sixth lowest in the country. We attribute that to a lot of pre-outage training.”

The success stories continued as the RFO 9 workforce effectively managed the big picture and communicated clearly through strong working relationships. Although the team achieved record-breaking efficiency in reactor disassembly and refueling, PSEG/FTI coordination efforts were equally important to
CRD exchange.

Mike Levesque, manager of BWR Services for FTI, said,
“The success of the control rod drive mechanism change out
illustrated the exceptional planning and communications that defined RFO 9.”

Dan Tighe, system engineer for PSEG, added, “Safety first is especially important when performing under-vessel work; however, through advanced planning, good teamwork, good communications, and training for first-time evolutions, the CRD mechanism change out was successful.” The project was completed in thirty hours, ten hours ahead of the targeted duration – and the team beat the dose target by more than 31 percent.
The performance also enhanced the plant’s material condition. The outage team replaced a total of nine CRD mechanisms during RFO 9.

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