POWER February 2011 - 38

INSTRUMENTATION & CONTROL
nents. Now EPRI has an initiative under its
Advanced Nuclear Technology program to
revise this report. The major goals of this
new initiative are to:
■ Develop guidance that limits the need for
exclusion zones for components, including
wireless equipment.
■ Develop guidance for a plantwide frequency
spectrum management plan.
■ Recommend a strategy to programmatically
address EMI during various lifecycle
phases of equipment such as design,
specification development, purchasing,
planning, and maintenance.
■ Provide guidance related to terminations,
which will reduce EMI concerns.
Southern Nuclear wants to leverage this
guidance to address EMI issues for Vogtle
Units 3 and 4.
Focusing on Important Frequencies.
Another way that Southern Nuclear is addressing
EMI is through an AP1000 utility
engineering committee. This committee
has been working with the AP1000 vendor
to ensure that EMI standards and testing
processes are commonly applied throughout
the project. Also, testing frequencies
have been increased from 1 gigahertz
(GHz) to 10 GHz.
In order to make the testing meaningful,
increased attention is being given to
any anomalies that may occur within critical
frequency bands. These critical frequency
bands are areas where the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission has
allocated frequencies for common uses. If
anomalies do occur in these regions, then
they will be given priority over anomalies
that do not occur in these critical frequency
bands. This ensures that attention is focused
on the most important areas.
Integrating Cyber Security
No other recent issue has dominated the
attention of the nuclear I&C industry like
cyber security. It often seems that cyber
security is the first, second, and third priority.
Vogtle Units 3 and 4 are not immune
to this threat. A great deal of time, travel,
and expense have been spent in developing
Vogtle Units 3 and 4's cyber security
plan. Because Vogtle Units 3 and 4 are the
AP1000 reference plant, the plan for these
units is essentially the plan for the first
wave of AP1000 units in the U.S. Thus, it
has been important to develop a consensus
approach to cyber security among current
AP1000 applicants.
After several meetings with the NRC,
the writing team agreed to submit the NRC
RG 5.71 Cyber Security Plan in January
38
2010 with a few exceptions. The breakthrough
occurred after the NRC understood
the need for these exceptions. The
writing team had also considered using the
NEI 08-09 template that the NRC stated
was an option. The NRC staff also stated
that using the NEI 08-09 template would
probably result in delay of the COL. After
weighing all of the options, the writing
team believed that submitting RG 5.71
with exceptions was the only viable option.
At the time this article was written in December,
review of the cyber security plan
for Units 3 and 4 was ongoing. Nevertheless,
the writing team and the applicants
are optimistic that the NRC will approve
the plan.
The program phase is next. A cyber security
team will have to be assembled and
procedures will need to be written that
define the cyber security program based
upon the cyber security plan. In addition,
the team will need to develop awareness
training for personnel in all involved organizations
(Southern Nuclear and vendors).
Procurement, design, information technology,
security, licensing, and construction
staffs will need to be told about the commitments
made in the cyber security plan.
Southern Nuclear continues to pursue
teaming arrangements to support efficient
development of the cyber security program
for Vogtle Units 3 and 4. Teaming with
other AP1000 applicants when evaluating
the critical systems and critical digital
assets is an example of that teamwork.
Furthermore, we plan to work with our existing
nuclear fleet to prevent duplication
of tasks. There is also a benefit in communicating
with Southern Company's fossil
fuel cyber security staff to ensure that we
share our best practices. In the end, sharing
and communicating with these other
organizations is beneficial for everyone
involved.
Managing a Growing Staff
INPO has developed a document entitled
" Principles for Excellence in Nuclear
Project Construction. " Principle #1 states
that " Leaders demonstrate alignment on a
commitment to excellence. " Though this
may seem like an odd topic for this article,
it is one that has received a great deal of
attention in the nuclear power industry.
INPO defines " leaders " in this context to
be executives and managers, but the impact
of this principle extends to all levels
of leaders in the entire organization. Several
examples of alignment and the reasons
for the changes are provided below.
Three years ago, the Nuclear Development
Engineering organization for Southwww.powermag.com
ern
Nuclear grew from one person to
four people. The author was part of that
initial staffing increase and was given
the responsibility of oversight for I&C,
electrical, information technology, communications,
human factors engineering,
configuration management, and any other
duty as assigned. Today the engineering
group contains more than 20 people. The
organization has had to be aligned to accommodate
the increased amount of work
and the increased number of people.
In his book Good to Great, author Jim
Collins comments that the companies he
studied not only got the right people on
the team but they also placed them in the
right positions. When undertaking a large
project such as building a commercial
nuclear power plant, it is critical that all
of the organizations involved get the right
people on the team and get them placed in
positions where they can excel. This is especially
true when increasing the size of
the organization, such as when ramping up
for a large project.
A complicating factor is that no new
commercial power plants have been built
in the U.S. in decades. As a result, there
are few people who have construction
experience, I&C experience, I&C system
installation and start-up experience, and
nuclear experience. In some instances,
a person may possess experience in all
of these areas, but these people are rare.
Thus, it is difficult to find people who possess
a good mix of these experiences and
to place them in positions where they can
perform extremely well.
Looking Ahead
Several times a year, someone within the
industry will ask me, " Do you think we will
really build any new nuclear power plants? "
The answer is " yes. " People are genuinely
shocked when I tell them just how much
progress has been made in the past three
years. Even the amount of progress in I&C
design is amazing. Even though questions
and challenges remain to be resolved, the
challenges are not insurmountable. The
Vogtle units are becoming a reality. In the
end, the goal of safely licensing, constructing,
and commissioning the first commercial
nuclear power plant in decades in the
U.S. is very achievable.
This article is based on a paper presented
by the author at the 15th Annual
POWID/EPRI Controls and Instrumentation
Symposium. ■
-James H. Flowers (jhflower@southernco
.com) is I&C engineering supervisor at
Southern Nuclear Operating Co.'s Nuclear
Development Division.
POWER | February 2011
http://www.powermag.com
POWER February 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER February 2011
