Change is………good?

We had a meeting with the site VP, the superintendent of Operations, Operations training manager, Operations Manager and all of the instructors on Friday. It looked bad, like the class was going to be canceled or something similar and it was, in a way. The staffing at the other unit sucks, and this is causing the SRO’s at that unit to want off of shift even more and the lack of availability of positions is causing them the same SRO’s to leave. So, in an effort to stem this hemorage, our class was changed to Unit 2. This is a definite issue with some of us, so much in fact that we will most likely lose 2 candidates, one RO and one SRO. My initial reaction is that from a field operator or licensed RO point of view, Unit 2 sucks because of the layout of the plant, but that the newer control room components may be nicer in the long run. As an aside, Unit 1 was licensed and operating before TMI-2 and Unit 2 was re-modeled and licensed after. It makes a huge difference in layout, but not so much in system operations. More updates as they occur!!

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!!

the first day

It started much as I expected with many site managers coming in to congratulate us for being selected and to remind us that it is “your license to get.” I didn’t get nearly as much negativity or animosity as I expected from the training staff. This could be because of recent staffing changes or that the reports that I had gotten were exaggerated. As one instructor put it this after noon “only 565 days to go.” At least we got some perks, a new laptop and the associated stuff