Kewaunee

[allforthenukie]

News clip from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

Kewaunee plant may stay shut for 2 months

Closing could overlap with Point Beach refueling

By THOMAS CONTENT
tcontent@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 9, 2005
One of Wisconsin's three nuclear power reactors may remain shut for up to two months, returning to service just as another state reactor is expected to be shut down for repairs.

The Kewaunee nuclear power plant, which has been shut down since Feb. 20, will not be back at full power until mid-April, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. told securities regulators Wednesday.

The plant, which is owned by Green Bay-based Wisconsin Public Service and Madison-based Wisconsin Power & Light Co., needs to have a backup cooling water pump redesigned to meet a new standard set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for reactors to withstand tornadoes, said Dave Molzahn, Wisconsin Public Service's director of nuclear oversight.

The shutdown could overlap with the planned shutdown of Point Beach Unit 2 reactor, which will be refueled and have its vessel cover replaced. Longer-than-normal shutdowns of Point Beach this year were among the reasons cited by We Energies when it asked for a price increase last month. Unit 2 is expected to be shut down in April and return to power before the summer hits, while Point Beach Unit 1 will be shut down this fall for refueling and to have its vessel cover replaced, utility officials said.

Together, the two reactors at Point Beach and one at Kewaunee supply nearly one-fifth of the state's electricity.

The shutdown is taking place at a time when the two Wisconsin utilities that own Kewaunee are hoping for a decision by the Public Service Commission permitting them to sell the plant to Dominion Resources Inc. of Richmond, Va. That proposal has been opposed by customer groups concerned about the precedent that could be set by selling a state-regulated power plant to an out-of-state company.

[allforthenukie]

Sale of Kewaunee Nuclear Plant has been approved!

http://www.jsonline.com/bym/news/mar05/310518.asp

[CheeseheadNuke]

HR has just posted 6 openings for Nuclear Auxiliary Operator. This is a non-licensed position that will eventually lead to license class as a Reactor Operator. BTW: Our sale has been approved to Dominion and we are waiting to hear when the sale will go through.

[evil-leprachaun]

I hear that Dominion has been coming in force lately bringing biscuts with no gravy!

Shouldn't they bring up just sandbags!

[evil-leprachaun]

Sold!

Now the NMC has 4 plants and in 2006 only 3 when DOM buys "The Beach"!

[Dustball]

The "thanks, but no thanks" letter......  dom?
WEC to review Point Beach options, reflects 'no displeasure' with NMC

Feb. 9, 2006

Wisconsin Energy Corp. (WEC) will spend the year evaluating four options related to the Point Beach plant, including continued operation by NMC, hiring a third-party operator other than NMC, returning to in-house operation by Wisconsin Electric, or selling the plant.

WEC officials announced the plan to review options for Point Beach during a conference call with investment analysts Wednesday.

"We will be thorough and deliberate in carrying out this review during 2006, and we will provide you with an update when we have reached our conclusions in the fourth quarter this year," said Gale Klappa, WEC's President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). We Energies, a unit of WEC, owns the Point Beach plant.

While stating that reductions in the size of the NMC fleet influenced their decision to evaluate options for Point Beach, Klappa and Rick Kuester, President and CEO of WEC unit We Generation, emphasized that NMC's performance in operating Point Beach was not a factor in their plan.

The WEC officials also expressed their belief that decisions by other owners of plants operated by NMC did not reflect any displeasure with NMC's performance. In fact, they noted, NMC has improved the performance of all the plants that it has operated.

NMC assumed the operation of five nuclear plants (and seven units) in 2000: Duane Arnold (single unit), Kewaunee (single unit), Monticello (single unit), Point Beach (two-unit) and Prairie Island (two-unit). In 2001, NMC assumed operation of the single-unit Palisades plant, bringing the fleet to eight nuclear units.

The fleet has been reduced in size since then, with the sale of Kewaunee in July 2005 from Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) to Dominion Resources and the sale of Duane Arnold from Alliant Energy to FPL Energy last month. Consumers Energy, the owner of the Palisades plant, also has announced its intent to sell that plant.

Referring to WPS, Alliant and Consumers Energy, Kuester told analysts that, "None of those companies . . . made those decisions based on NMC performance. I think all the owners [in NMC] have been pleased with the performance and improvements in performance they have gotten out of the units.

"There were other business reasons at work for those other owners," Kuester continued. "I don't want anyone to interpret that there's displeasure with NMC performance. It's simply that every company has to evaluate their situation, their customer needs, their portfolio and make a decision based on that."

Klappa also said WEC has "not concluded that NMC is not a viable operator. In fact," he added, "if you look around the country at the size of fleets, certainly there are some major nuclear consolidators, but there are other operators doing very well with the size of the fleet that NMC would have. ... And, as Rick mentioned, NMC's track record in improving the performance at every one of the plants that it's operated has been quite positive."

[AS55555]

Can anyone tell me who is the Rad Protecton and Chemistry Manager and anything about where he came from or background.

Thanks

[allforthenukie]

Who will be staffing the RP techs and decon help, if any, for the next refuel outage?

[nuke_girl]

i heard Bartlett has the decon/ho contract for Kewaunnee but they were only bringing in like 20 deconners..all seniors. I think Joey is staffing and Eric also..and everyone is confirming already..so id go ahead and give bartlett a call if you want to get in there

[nuke_girl]

typing errors suck !! lolol that decon /hp  lolol

[Lorrie Henson]

allforthenukie,

Are you on the road again?  I thought you took an in-house position at Cook....

Lorrie

[Lorrie Henson]

Nuke Girl,

I think you got it right the first time!!!  I feel like a HO at times.

LOLOLOLOL

[nuke_girl]

lololol..<< smiling..and congrats on your new little bundle of joy !!

[allforthenukie]

Thanks for the info nuke girl.
Yes, I'm employed as an in house RP tech at Point Beach, right down the road from Kewaunee. I wanted the info for a friend who needs a job. I'll give him the Bartlett number.
Brian

[nuke_girl]

no problem hope your friend gets on with bartlett !! maybe we will see him at millstone also..both dominion outages this season !

[rocknrollrick]

Like the area and the plant is really clean! The people in the area are very nice but the outage is falling way behind schedule. Dominion's first outage here and the house is fighting the procedure changes. It will take a couple of outages for them to get up to speed.

[rocknrollrick]

OK let's see we are now over a week behind and everthing they do here turns to crap. The first Senior tech had to leave yesterday due to the next job and the site wouldn't release him. So he lost his Bonus and travel pay after the fact he told Bartlett and the utility up front that he could only stay to the 16th. We got 5 more that got to go by the end of this week and 16 to go to Milestone. The rpm promised that he would get everyone to their commitments but I guess that doesn't count anymore Then these sites wonder why that can't get tech's to return back Oh forgot to mention fuel is still in pot because of service water valve problem for cooling which they have known about for 2 weeks. Supposed to move fuel starting Monday for off load. 

[dks860]

Ah but now the upender is broke.....no fuel movement today unless they can fix it.......usually when things get behind a couple days everyone gets frantic.  Not here.............

[RADBASTARD]

I heard it's day 21 and your 18 days behind ,is that true??
man it sonds like the 80's again?

[dks860]

I think we are about 7 days behind according to what I heard yesterday.

[vikingfan]

heard westinghouse packed up their stuff and left ? whats the exact circumstance of that situation any one know? heard they were suppose to start moving fuel again yesterday ? well I'm reporting in this morning so we can finnish the fuel reload and head reasembly was told we would be out by friday or saturday. hope this is true...

[dks860]

Westinghouse left for other commitments.  Areva has been brought in.  Refueling has not started.  They are supposed to move the head and upper internals today.  Then they have to flood up so they can start fuel movement.  This whole outage has been a series of things gone wrong.

[atomicarcheologist]

These posts sound so unlike the Kewaunee Plant that I have worked and thoroughly enjoyed.  That place was the epitome of laid back professional outage management, complete with planning and forethought.  It probably helped that they had the plant fine tuned for the operational year.  But the outages were so well run.

[dks860]

It is my understanding that the reason things aren't going so smoothly is a big change in procedures at last minute.  While we were in training, procedures were changing daily.  It's only been about a year since Dominion took over (maybe a bit longer) and their way of doing things is substantially different than what Kewaunee was used to.  Growing pains I guess.

[SloGlo]

it sounds like dominion shood have not only kept kewaunee's procedures intact, but made them fleetwide.  it was simplicity at it's finest, their hp procedures woodent have filled a 3" ring back binder and yet they covered everything krystle kleer.