info on Q/C Q/A training

[lovemussel]

 Hi
   I am wanting to get into qc qa and would like to know the best place to start as far as training ect. i am at duke right now at occonee and have to be at catawba on the nov. 18th and am off for a couple of months until the mguire outage and will have a little time for some online training ect. i am a turbin , turbin feedwater ,and rcp mechanic but i haven't really been able to gather up any info on the qc qa training  if anyone could guide me in the right direction i will appreciate it.
  also we have a mess here at oconee as they bent 3 fuel ass. and rods putting the plenum and head back on and areva is trying to get 1 out that was badly damaged this outage is gonna be atleast 3 weeks late and also catawba had to go down about 2 weeks early because of a rcp leak so all in all duke is spending some money right now .
                                thanks

[Fermi2]

QA has to know how to spell, capitalize, and punctuate correctly.

Mike

[QCguy]

    Good news and bad news,
      The good - I've been asked this question at almost every outage.  The bad - there is no simple answer.  Most get into QC by being a craft worker at a major plant and getting a job change into QC.   QC and QA are different jobs and need different skills, QC is looking at things and work; it's inspection and observation.  QA is looking at programs and  processes, following the paper trail.  Often QA comes from college engineering, operations or security supervisors who don't want to supervise anymore, a sideways shuffle from procurement engineering, or from some other field such as aerospace or manufacturing.
       The American Society of Quality (ASQ) has some classes, given what you said was your background,  the most relevant one is for Mechanical Inspector.  Google ASQ for your local region and chapter, they have web pages that will give you info about dates/places/costs.
       There are also requirements about experience and education; more college, less experience, of course.  Nuclear power plants are not driven by a Nuclear Reaction, instead they are driven by Nuclear Regulatory Guides, from the NRC.  These can be found on the NRC web site.  Reg Guide 1.8.  It says that Supplement 2S-1 of ANSI/ASME NQA-1-1983 should be used for qualification criteria.  But if you are a welding inspector there is another standard, ASNT SNT-TC-1A.  (Yeah, welcome to the Nuc world buddy, paper and regs and standards).    But the basic level (QC Level 1) requires 2 years of experience in equivalent inspection, exam, or testing, or High School graduation and 6 months experience or Associate Degree and three months, etc, etc, for the higher levels QC II and QC III,  more time and /or education.
        There is a lot more to know than just what kind of tolerance a bearing should have or how to do a blue check, its a lot of paperwork and study too, and getting to know a little bit about a lot of things.
         I'm sorry to sound negative, but I don't know of any schools for a Nuc QC inspector.  Maybe some of the large service companies will train their people into the position, like Ames or Westinghouse, but I don't know that for a fact.  If I haven't totally discouraged you, look for the ASQ classes, and on your next job, ask the QC inspector what site procedures he uses to do his inspections.  See if you can get copies and read them, it will give you an idea of what goes on.  Because the Nuc industry is procedure drive (10 CFR 50 says you WILL have procedures)  Nuc plants have procedures for qualifying Inspectors.  Get a copy of those, most places they aren't company proprietary information, so there shouldn't be a big deal about that.  And good luck if you keep at it.
         Oh, BTW, pay on the road for most QC seems to be in the $33 to 35 range, time and a half for OT usually, usual per diem (about 1/2 the federal rate for any one place)      and no retirements, 401Ks, or medical bennies.
       
       
     

[NDTgirl]

Hiya
I absolutely fell into this career, and it wasn't hard.

I decided to pursue the non-destructive testing side of QC and I went to a specialty school for it. Here is a list of some of the schools that ASNT recognizes, but you should check the requirements of the company you'd like to be with. Some say that 50% of your classroom training needs to be lab time, others don't require that much. Check out the reputation of the school before devoting a lot of money into training.

http://www.asnt.org/links/educational.htm

I chose Hellier for my training. I took 4 of their classes (PT, MT, VT, UTT) and they came highly recommended to me by the QC techs I knew and I would definitely recommend them again. My classes were each about a week long and a thousand bucks. I do not have a college degree. If I had more time and resources, I would pursue a 2-year degree in NDT, but for now I am able to find jobs and work on acquiring enough on-the-job training hours to finish my lvl II certs.

First you need school hours (8-40 hrs depending on the method and company requirements), then you need field experience hours in each method. Being a trainee you can expect to make $18-25 an hour. Once you have the needed amount of experience hours documented(195-265 for most methods, upwards of 2,000 hrs for UT and RT), the company will give you a test to pass. Upon completion of these steps, you now have a lvl II cert with that company. If you switch to a different company you don't have to repeat your training hours as long as you keep documentation of them, but you will have to pass that company's test.

A LOT of QC is who you know. Network as much as you can for better job opportunities.

I hope some of this helps. I'm still pretty new at it myself but if I can do it, I'm sure you can =)

[NukeInspector]

I agree with Mike. Don't expect an inspection job with Duke.