MSC News

MSC News National Headlines Sports Top Headlines CBS US News CBS Technology

Printer Friendly

Email to a Friend

Stella School Hosting Training for Cooper Nuclear Workers

By Matthew Leaf

09/10/2012

1XXXXX

(Stella) - The former Southeast Consolidated School building in Stella is finding a new use. A portion of the building is being used as a training location for workers involved in a specific procedure during next month’s refueling outage at the Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville.
Jeff Wagner is the Night Shift Project Manager for the fan coil replacement unit. He says they built an exact replica of a quarter section of Cooper’s drywell unit to train the workers who will be replacing the plant’s fan coil units, which are original to the plant. (play audio :19 “24-months of operation.”)
The fan coil units cool the ambient air inside the drywell, maintaining a temperature of less than 150-degrees, to protect the electrical components.
The drywell is the area of the plant that houses the reactor and is not accessible while the plant is in operation – which Wagner says is why they built the mock-up in Stella. (play audio   :32   “when they come in.”)
Wagner says the mock-up is an exact replica of what workers will experience at the nuclear plant. (play audio :32   “in October.”)
Wagner says no other boiling water reactor has a mock-up drywell of a size similar to the one in Stella. (play audio :23    “the right solution.”)
The refueling outage at Cooper is scheduled for October and is slated to take 27 days to complete. The operation to change the fan coil units will take seven days.
The public got a chance to see the mock-up during an open house last week. More information on the mock-up and the scope of the work is available through a video tour on the Nebraska Public Power District’s Facebook page, and at NPPD.com.