The 2010 US Users Group Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska concluded on May 26. Studsvik would like to thank the nearly 60 participants and the various organizations that made this meeting a success.
Presentations from the 2010 US Users Group Meeting are now available in the Technical Archives section.
We would especially like to thank Dave Bannister, Vice President Nuclear and Chief Nuclear Officer at Omaha Public Power Division, who served as keynote speaker. Dave provided insight into the environment at Fort Calhoun that has driven their progress in achieving high capacity factors, plant life extension, power uprates, fuel vendor-independence, and personnel retention. Dave has been at OPPD his entire career, and sees a strong link between a well run plant and the ability to retain talented people.
We at Studsvik were especially satisfied to hear Dave’s comments on the value of in-house reload analysis capability, including reduced reload costs. These skills allow OPPD to make core design changes quickly if needed (for example, core redesigns due to failed fuel and broken ICI thimbles), providing fuel vendor oversight and independence.
As testimony as to how globally linked we the nuclear industry is Dave showed a photograph of steam generators from Mitsubishi being delivered to Fort Calhoun as part of the power uprate program. Those steam generators began their journey to Omaha from the Mitsubishi shipyard in Kobe, Japan. Sitting in the audience during the very same presentation and participating in our Users Group Meeting was Mr. Nagai from Mitsubishi. Mr. Nagai works in the Nuclear Analysis section of Mitsibishi, headquartered in the very same shipyard in Kobe, Japan!
Dave’s presentation was followed by another excellent presentation from Susan Baugh, supervisor of the reactor performance analysis group, regarding OPPD’s transition from Westinghouse to Areva fuel. Susan provided a comprehensive road map of working in unison with the fuel vendor along with OPPD’s in-house reload capabilities to make a smooth transition.
We also had numerous presentations from several customers on a variety of interesting topics:
Jim Eller of Duke presented radial tilt problems on the McGuire plant being analyzing using CMS. Stephanie Roberts of Southern California Edison, who was a first time attendee of the Studsvik User Group Meeting, provided us a presentation on how CMSOps is being introduced to operations at San Onofre. Steve Rowe of Entergy described analysis using CMS for operations support at Waterford; and Nella Szwarc, also from Entergy, gave some preliminary results of CMS comparison to gamma scans from Fitzpatrick, which are of great value of the industry.
Bob Hall of Dominion provided a detailed analysis on the impact of IFBA loading to measured deviations for soluble boron. Finally, Hong Wu Cheng from Vattenfall in Sweden provided a very detailed evaluation of CASMO5/SIMULATE3 vs. CASMO4/SIMULATE3 showing marked improvement in various parameters associated with reload analysis for one of the Ringhals PWR’s.
In addition to these great customer presentations, Studsvik engineers presented a large spectrum of our products, including software and analysis services.
Outside of the presentations we would like to mention the local level of support from the good people at OPPD and Cooper, who comprised nearly a quarter of the participants, making this among the highest level of local support we’ve seen at a Users Group Meeting.
Also of note was a large contingency of younger people in the group. By a rough estimate, there were at least 20 people under 35 years of age; and we haven’t seen that in a long time. Several gave presentations and many were active in the discussions during the meeting.
There were also several reactor engineers from Ringhals in Sweden, Cooper, and Fort Calhoun, who exchanged their various experiences on operating practices at their own plants. They mentioned to us that they would like to form a small side meeting perhaps at the next users group meeting for reactor engineers to discuss how they support operations using CMS and learn from one another. We are, of course, very happy to support such activities and that is what the meeting has always been about; meeting with us and learning what Studsvik is developing, but also meeting colleagues from other companies and countries and learning from each other.
We encourage you to download the presentations and leave us a comment. We look at the user group meeting as not only as a Studsvik meeting but also a meeting for our customers. Whether you were able to join us for the meeting in Omaha or not, let us know what you would like to see or things you think we can improve upon.
In the meantime, we are getting right back to work on the next meeting for 2011! Give us your comments and suggestions. Check back on the website regularly for new information.
We hope to see you in 2011.
