Getting What You Pay For……

While doing research on a previous post, I found some interesting in the forum at the Professional Reactor Operator Society (PROS) website, not that this is vetted information, it is what it is and may be an advertisement for other stations. TVA plants pay their Non-Licensed Operators (NLO) a bonus for each phase of training (At Sequoyah, a non licensed operator's base pay is raised ~10% when they enter license training. In addition, effective 12/6/07,each Nuclear Unit Operator trainee will receive one-time lump sum payments for successful completion of three stages of training. Successful being a passing score on the final exam for each stage of training. The amounts are: GFES $2000 Systems training $4000 TVA audit exam $5000 plus a $5000 for passing the final NRC Exam). This is on the high end and unfortunately for us, we are on the low end (we get the glory of being in the class). And as hard to believe as it is, some companies actually plan and pay for hours of extra study. I don’t expect to post any more on this as the company is pretty set.

On License class "throughput"

The issue onsite is the “thru put” of the classes that is from the first date of seating for the class to the first sign on as licensed operators. The historical average for the last several classes is about 60%. In the Navy, both when I was a student and an instructor, we measured from boot camp selection to qualification at prototype and our number was about the same. The major difference was that the Navy had an extensive selection process to weed out problem sailors prior to the expensive training at NPS and NPTU where the drop rates were in the 3-5% range. The problem with this is time and money, or money and time. The class is 18 months long and there are only enough instructors to run one class at a time. So from a fiscal standpoint, putting a class together without ensuring a high thru-put is idiocy, but we continue to do it.

Doing some online research, I found an article by Mark Rasmussen in the “Communicator” which is the official periodical of the Professional Reactor Operator Society (PROS) which directly addresses this issue. Mark says that the “narrow definition of throughput relies on the assumption that the training program has the ability to accurately identify a “bad” student. In my opinion this is a false assumption. I have seen many excellent non-licensed Operators get kicked out of license class for reasons that have nothing to do with their ultimate capability to succeed in the control room. Over the years license programs have been repeatedly compressed, packing more learning into less time. Expectations for academic performance have risen. The move to “higher order” questions means that the tests are harder (and the grades are lower). Only a Training person would claim that these higher order questions are in any way better at determining who deserves a license and who doesn’t…. going through initial class twice, the first time in the mid-eighties and then again just a few years ago. The material was pretty much the same, but the tests were much harder the second time. I did pretty well, but I saw people sitting next to me wash out that I KNOW WITH 100% CONFIDENCE would have made fine ROs. They washed out because our program was not able to discern between the student that was never going to catch on, and the student that just needed more time. When we wash out people like this, we are doing ourselves, and them, a great disservice.
Measuring throughput as the ratio of students that pass the NRC exam to the number of students in class on day one is the only legitimate way to measure it. And the bad throughput numbers in the industry today should be telling us that our training programs are flawed, just as much as they are telling us that our selection process, or the students themselves, are flawed.”

Pretty much sums it up and far more eloquently than I could have said it. Looks like a training department issue. Much more to follow on this!!

Essay VS Multiple choice Exams

Back in the Navy we took essay exams, a lot of essay exams. Essay exams for qualification, inspections, re-qualification and so on. The current industry opinion (formed by the NRC) is that grading an essay question is too subjective and could lead to a student without an adequate knowledge level passing a license test, hence, multiple choice questions. There are entire regulations on how to write the question and distracters. The strange thing is that our instructors routinely advise us to get a real feel for the material and not worry about the test, but in reality the questions are so convoluted that the only real way to assess knowledge is to do practice questions as a test. The fact is that in order to get questions that actually test knowledge, they are complicated. The handy thing is that the generic fundamentals exams given this century and a sample exam bank are online at nrc.gov. So, here is a sample question, all you nukes see what you think….

TOPIC: 192006
KNOWLEDGE: K1.06 [3.2/3.4]
QID: P259
A nuclear reactor has been operating at 50% power for one week when power is quickly ramped (over 4 hours) to 100%. How will the core xenon-135 concentration respond?
A. Decrease initially, then build to a new equilibrium concentration in 8 to 10 hours
B. Increase steadily to a new equilibrium concentration in 20 to 30 hours
C. Decrease initially, then build to a new equilibrium concentration in 40 to 50 hours
D. Increase steadily to a new equilibrium concentration in 70 to 80 hours


Not that tough, if you’ve seen the material and the question at least 5 times.

Now, not having realized this, being a tad bit overconfident when it comes to classroom training and as a Naval Nuclear instructor, judgmental of the materials, instructors and content I failed to adequately prepare for the first quiz in Reactor Theory almost tanked it. Not that I couldn’t have passed a good old fashioned essay test like in the Navy, but multiple choice can be tricky. In addition we have some new concepts here that if one is not fully versed in can be even more tricky. So in an effort to not repeat that performance, I delved into the books and the exam bank and scored better on Friday. So today and tomorrow, we are studying and going over the exam banks. Not much more exciting but I will finish my rant on the course in general and get it posted today.

taking a breather

We are currently making our way thru the theory portion of the class and have started with reactor theory. I’ll admit that I felt a little cocky entering this phase, as I was by definition the reactor theory guru on at least one boat. I can definitely tell why Rickover was so adamant about the enrichment of fuel and the nuclear properties of the other materials he selected in his reactor designs. As soon as you put a good amount of U238 in to the picture, the cores get large (infinite) and the transuranics become very complicated. Not that he couldn’t have trained us, but the actual nuclear responses are very, very slow and getting the margins that he did wouldn’t have been very difficult. If interested, you could look at Doppler broadening and chemical shimming for examples.

One of my former minions commented on my reaction to the attitudes of the instructors here, like the Navy instructors were cocky, well just imagine if they never had to leave after getting here and never had to work with the students that they taught (ie, you wouldn’t send a kid to the fleet that you wouldn’t want to have work for/with you). Navy instructors were very mindful of this and were reminded routinely by their supervisors. Several of us former Navy nukes were talking today and agreed that there was very little actual ownership of the final product. I am amazed that the instructors don’t realize that a student in the current license class could be their boss in ten years or so, while they are still trying to “make it to retirement.” Another astounding difference.

There are the similarities, the variance of atomic concentration and reactivity worth of Xenon over the core lifetimes is amazing similar. Now off to review some reactivity balances and look at the NRC Exam bank.

wrap up for the first week

We definitely learned some stuff this first week, actual book work withstanding.

First and foremost we had the fact that it is “your license to get!” reinforced at each turn by each manager and instructor. Basically, the attitude is that no matter how poor the materials, training aids, classroom conditions, schedules, schedule changes, or “presenters” if we really want it we must go and get it. Please note that the instructors consider themselves “presenters” so that the responsibility for all of the material falls squarely on the candidate, for better or for worse. Some small changes from the last several classes came when the operations managers for the unit came in and indicated that if we were having trouble, we should contact them and that they would ensure we got all the help that we needed. But, then the instructors indicated that it was still “your license to get!”

Second, we learned that much like in our non-licensed training that the instructors are so insulated from us as students that constructive criticism on issues likequiz scheduling is immediately taken as an affront. The general attitude on this subject is that “the instructors have been doing this for a long time and they know what they are doing, who are you to question them?”

Third we learned that the instructors and supervisors take initial “guesses” at who will and will not make it thru the process at this stage. They all seem to be surprised that they are all guessing that we will all most likely make it. They seemed to have taken great pleasure in this in previous classes and one of the operators that declined to take his license exams (quit the class) was told after the fact that all of the instructors had know from the beginning that he was going to fail.