Travel Time

Today I returned from Atlanta-uneventful flight down and an uneventful flight home! I even made it back in time for volleyball tonight.

I went down for a conference on the accident at Three Mile Island. The point was to educate "younger" people in the industry on the accident who weren't around when it happened. It was a really interesting picture of culture in the US at the time, the accident, and how it affected our industry in the end. Most people agreed that it was overall a positive because of the great improvements to our processes and the lessons learned, however, it did result in a bad public perception of nuclear for a long time and halted the construction of many plants. The point was made as to how the situation right now is very similar to that in the late 70's-we are beginning to have a shortage of knowledgeable people (in the 70's because the industry was so young and today because people are starting to retire and knowledge is being transferred to a new generation of workers). Nuclear is also seen as a positive, like it was in the 70's-currentlyabout a 70% approval rating now and 4x as many people strongly in favor versus strongly opposed to nuclear. New plants are starting to be built and the industry is again on the rise. Its a very exciting time, but also an appropriate time to reflect on the past and how quickly public perception and momentum of the industry can change.

By the way-for an accident that had such significant affect on the industry that it took nearly 30 years to regain public support and confidence there were 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 0 over-exposures to radiation to the public and plant workers, and 0 damage to off-site property. Pretty amazing.

In the end I took a lot more away from it then I thought I would. It was interesting to learn how so much of what we do today was a result of the TMI accident. I am responsible for several systems that were put in the plant as a direct result of the accident and I never had that perspective before. It gives me a new understanding of their importance, and a new motivation to keep maintaining them as best I can.

While I was in Atlanta I also got to visit the headquarters of INPO (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations). It is a group funded by the industry to promote excellence and provide another form of oversight for the industry as a whole. It was really neat to tour the building and see where it is based since we deal with them so frequently.

I leave again in a few days for Idaho for a week of training on some software I need to use for work. It uses a model of the plant and we can change different parameters to see how the plant will respond to potential scenarios-very cool for someone interested in maximizing our MW output!

I return from Idaho next Friday and leave again Saturday for Orlanda, again! This time is for fun-a short vacation with my parents before we start our spring refueling outage and I have to work crazy hours again. I will have a laptop with me, and hopefully have time to post, especially if for some reason I'd get stuck in an airport for longer than anticipated.