The questions in question were indeed the controller and fuel defect questions. By Friday we had convinced the staff that the controller question was OK, and when the “interim exam key” came out excepting both answers, the whole issue became mute.
There are several differences in the Navy and commercial schools of thought and one was illustrated by the exam. The commercial industry does not mathematically include the terms for reactivity addition and source neutrons in the reactor period equation. One of my esteemed classmates is in the process of getting his masters degree in nuclear engineering and is familiar with derivation of the period equation. He agrees that several of the misunderstandings that our other classmates had would have been avoided had these factors been included. The other part of this issue is that the commercial industry (at lease here) stresses reactor period vice SUR for their classroom instruction and testing. This leads to inaccuracies in conceptualization for questions like the effect of changing the average effective delayed neutron fraction over core life. Using the SUR equation, it is easy to see this effect, using reactor period is more difficult.
As for this particular exam, I did get a 98%. Please believe me when I say that I am not bragging. If you can pass NPS and get thru NPTU, you should be able to ace this exam. I have a particular problem of often answering overly simple questions completely wrong. I call this “head in ass syndrome” and did a great job overcoming it during this phase of training. I started with missing an average of 3 questions to this syndrome per exam to 1. This is not perfect but a marked improvement.
This morning we started the systems portion of the training process with some basic print reading and some test taking techniques. At the outset it would seem that these topics would have been more effective prior to the GFES exams but they are painfully in depth for our plant. Once again, if you have ever been at the schematic level in a tech manual, you can make this work. Right now I’m just trying to stay awake……
Monday, March 9, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
The GFES saga continues.......
You may think that after taking the actual exam, that the candidates would know if they passed or failed in short order. The truth is that much like the rest of the government, the NRC is bound by its own red tape. Here’s the rundown of how it’s going for us.
27 February, the exams came on site. The instructors that reviewed the exams or were proctors had to sign a statement to the NRC that they had no “technical” conversations with the students prior or during the exam period.
01 March, the instructors took the exam to generate the “preliminary onsite key.”
03 March, the exams were administered and Fedexed back to the NRC. All of the sites administering the test did so at the same time (i.e. east coast started at 1200, west coast started at 0900). We were not allowed to have any electronics or access to phones during the exam period (until 1500). As part of the unofficial evaluation, the instructors and the class reviewed each question and came up with a “best guess answer,” using the preliminary onsite key and looked for questions that may have not had a correct answer or may have had more than one correct answer.
06 March, when the NRC has received all of the exams, they will transmit via email their “preliminary” answer key. This key is preliminary because if there are challenges to the exam or key, they will be evaluated before the final key is sent out
??? the final answer key is out and the final grades are approved once all challenges are answered.
I am not concerned by the bureaucracy as I either scored a 94, 96 or 98, I just find it kind of amusing.
The rest of the “funny” associated with the exam is that one of the instructors that took the test, is hell bent that one of the answers is wrong and needs to be challenged and the rest of us think that it is just fine. He got it wrong by the way (and yes he is an @##$$).
27 February, the exams came on site. The instructors that reviewed the exams or were proctors had to sign a statement to the NRC that they had no “technical” conversations with the students prior or during the exam period.
01 March, the instructors took the exam to generate the “preliminary onsite key.”
03 March, the exams were administered and Fedexed back to the NRC. All of the sites administering the test did so at the same time (i.e. east coast started at 1200, west coast started at 0900). We were not allowed to have any electronics or access to phones during the exam period (until 1500). As part of the unofficial evaluation, the instructors and the class reviewed each question and came up with a “best guess answer,” using the preliminary onsite key and looked for questions that may have not had a correct answer or may have had more than one correct answer.
06 March, when the NRC has received all of the exams, they will transmit via email their “preliminary” answer key. This key is preliminary because if there are challenges to the exam or key, they will be evaluated before the final key is sent out
??? the final answer key is out and the final grades are approved once all challenges are answered.
I am not concerned by the bureaucracy as I either scored a 94, 96 or 98, I just find it kind of amusing.
The rest of the “funny” associated with the exam is that one of the instructors that took the test, is hell bent that one of the answers is wrong and needs to be challenged and the rest of us think that it is just fine. He got it wrong by the way (and yes he is an @##$$).
Miss Atom? you have to love the Russians
Looking at the PROS website the other day, I found that the former soviet republics have a Miss Atom contest each year. At first the thought is ludicrous, but on further inspection (and translation) it is a spotlight on careers in infrastructure and engineering for women. And hey, they are cute too. Check it out at http://miss2009.nuclear.ru/?from=300 and you may want to open a bablefish window to find out that all they want is a good job, a good husband and world peace.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
What it takes to get through GFES (so far)
So every successful person wants to share his/her insights and such on how to get ahead, right? Well here is how it is for us and we have all been successful (so far). I will use today’s subject as an example. I hope you enjoy the info and the irony. By the way, the company has been gregarious enough to provide us with laptop computers and a wireless network with all of the training materials provided in advance. The topic in question is “Demineralizers and Ion Exchangers.”
Yesterday afternoon, uploaded the powerpoint presentation and the student handout. Reviewed all 117 slides and discovered that the first 20 slides were review questions from previous topics and the last 10 were review questions from this topic, and there were 5 slides of objectives. Reviewed the student handout’s 15 pages. Uploaded the topic NRC exam bank questions and answered all of the questions (once) using the provided material.
This morning opened the powerpoint, and topic NRC exam bank on computer, obtained hard copy student handout from initial non-licensed training course. During class reviewed the NRC exam bank and student text while the instructor was presenting the powerpoint and highlighted exam answers and calculation techniques in the student text.
Following the 2.5 hour presentation and lunch with blog posting, answered the entire topic NRC exam bank..again. With several hours left of the day, review reactor theory and thermo.
And so it goes
Yesterday afternoon, uploaded the powerpoint presentation and the student handout. Reviewed all 117 slides and discovered that the first 20 slides were review questions from previous topics and the last 10 were review questions from this topic, and there were 5 slides of objectives. Reviewed the student handout’s 15 pages. Uploaded the topic NRC exam bank questions and answered all of the questions (once) using the provided material.
This morning opened the powerpoint, and topic NRC exam bank on computer, obtained hard copy student handout from initial non-licensed training course. During class reviewed the NRC exam bank and student text while the instructor was presenting the powerpoint and highlighted exam answers and calculation techniques in the student text.
Following the 2.5 hour presentation and lunch with blog posting, answered the entire topic NRC exam bank..again. With several hours left of the day, review reactor theory and thermo.
And so it goes
Peering sadly into freedom???
Or a view from our classroom window. Well it’s not that bad, but it does get oppressive at times. I had the camera in the class room to upload the Monday Jack and snapped a few pics. I would have posted earlier but the department superintendent was observing our training and I figured it would be in poor taste to be on the internet during class time with him here. I’ll post something else soon
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
the dreaded queston #75
This was a modified question from the NRC Bank. The reason that the instructors picked this question was “to illustrate that memorizing the exam bank” was not desired. The funny response when half of the class missed the question was “got ya!!” The response, initially, did not actually address the possibility that the question or the distractors were substandard. There were some relatively snide emails that passed between the instructors and our department mentors and managers and at least one of them was good enough to pass it along to the students. On further investigation, it was revealed that the question could be worked at least two ways and that the stem of the question had been incorrectly modified. In all, it took a week before the dubious quality of the question was acknowledged by the staff. Here is the original question followed by the modified question. If you want to do the calculations you will need your steam tables!! Enjoy!!!
TOPIC: 191006
KNOWLEDGE: K1.13 [2.8/2.9]
QID: P2984 (B2084)
The following 100% rated power conditions existed before a nuclear power plant outage:
Main condenser pressure: 1.20 psia
Cooling water inlet temperature: 60F
Cooling water outlet temperature: 92F
During the outage, 6% of the main condenser tubes were plugged. After the outage, the following 100% rated power conditions exist:
Main condenser pressure: 1.31 psia
Cooling water inlet temperature: 60F
Cooling water outlet temperature: ?
Which one of the following is the approximate cooling water outlet temperature after the outage?
A. 92F
B. 94F
C. 96F
D. 98F
___________________________________________________________
The following 100% rated power conditions existed before a nuclear power plant outage:
Main condenser pressure: 1.20 psia
Cooling water inlet temperature: 60F
Cooling water outlet temperature: 92F
During the outage, 6% of the main condenser tubes were plugged. After the outage, the following 100% rated power conditions exist:
Main condenser pressure: 1.35 psia
Cooling water inlet temperature: 60F
Cooling water outlet temperature: ?
Which one of the following is the approximate cooling water outlet temperature after the outage?
A. 92F
B. 94F
C. 96F
D. 98F
TOPIC: 191006
KNOWLEDGE: K1.13 [2.8/2.9]
QID: P2984 (B2084)
The following 100% rated power conditions existed before a nuclear power plant outage:
Main condenser pressure: 1.20 psia
Cooling water inlet temperature: 60F
Cooling water outlet temperature: 92F
During the outage, 6% of the main condenser tubes were plugged. After the outage, the following 100% rated power conditions exist:
Main condenser pressure: 1.31 psia
Cooling water inlet temperature: 60F
Cooling water outlet temperature: ?
Which one of the following is the approximate cooling water outlet temperature after the outage?
A. 92F
B. 94F
C. 96F
D. 98F
___________________________________________________________
The following 100% rated power conditions existed before a nuclear power plant outage:
Main condenser pressure: 1.20 psia
Cooling water inlet temperature: 60F
Cooling water outlet temperature: 92F
During the outage, 6% of the main condenser tubes were plugged. After the outage, the following 100% rated power conditions exist:
Main condenser pressure: 1.35 psia
Cooling water inlet temperature: 60F
Cooling water outlet temperature: ?
Which one of the following is the approximate cooling water outlet temperature after the outage?
A. 92F
B. 94F
C. 96F
D. 98F
License class examinations/quizzes/tests
The first phase of NRC licensing is the Generic Fundamentals Examination. “A Generic Fundamentals Examination (GFE) consists of 50 multiple-choice test items that examine applicant knowledge in three broad categories of nuclear power plant fundamentals: Components, Reactor Theory, and Thermodynamics. Each category contains several major topics, with multiple subtopics, or knowledges. Applicants must successfully pass the GFE with a score of 80 percent before they are eligible to take a facility-specific examination that if also successfully passed may lead to an NRC reactor operator license. The GFE web site provides access to all test items that have appeared on a GFE and all GFEs that have been administered since January 2001.” (http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operator-licensing/generic-fundamentals-examinations/general-information.html)
The screening for the questions and distracters’ is quite extensive as I have previously stated. When generating an exam, they use 80% questions directly from the bank, modify 10% and make up 10% new questions with the new and modified questions also meeting the same screening.
To keep up with the standard, the training department uses the same criteria for making our module quizzes and tests; however, occasionally the screening process is somewhat less than perfect as was evidenced by a question on our module final for thermodynamics.
The screening for the questions and distracters’ is quite extensive as I have previously stated. When generating an exam, they use 80% questions directly from the bank, modify 10% and make up 10% new questions with the new and modified questions also meeting the same screening.
To keep up with the standard, the training department uses the same criteria for making our module quizzes and tests; however, occasionally the screening process is somewhat less than perfect as was evidenced by a question on our module final for thermodynamics.
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