From the Communicator - license class throughput
I had the opportunity to see an advance copy of the summer 2007 issue of the Communicator and feel compelled to make a comment. In this issue Len Hubbard described NRC Region IV Operations Branch Chief Tony Gody’s comments at the PROS annual meeting. Mr. Gody had discussed how an overemphasis on “throughput†in the initial license training program could mask the real goal of producing quality Operators. This is an excellent point and I agree completely. Len went on to describe his desire that throughput be considered to be the ratio of people passing the NRC exam to those sent up for the NRC exam, excluding the people that are weeded out along the way. Len argued that the training program must have the capability to weed out failing candidates as the program progresses, and this weeding out should not lower the throughput number used to gauge the program’s success.
In my opinion this sounds like a Training person talking. That 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. How many of you seasoned veterans reading this think you could succeed in an initial class today? Many of you certainly would, but just as certainly some of you would not. Would you be weeded out if you had to go through initial training again? Does this mean that we have people in the control room that don’t deserve a license? Of course not.
I have had the pleasure(?) of holding two licenses and 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.
all the expessions above.. in your blog have a sense of reality .. but of coure as you know being experience people.. the drive in the industry today it to pass on that experience to those students learning the business today ,, and not to figure out what they know. The only reason the regulator is interested in what your doing is , what are the students going to do when something goes wrong. This involves many situations from a simple pump trip with back up started to a loss of regulation that is not recognized.
This is my specialty .. and if the nuclear business is going to go forward , we must protect against this.
this is done with a standard approach transients.. that nobody in the world has.. I speak this with authority , cause I have see it all ..
up until1995 .. in OPG. Ontario Power Generation , Candu station in Ontario Canada,. none ,,, not one ,,,, of the Operators at the controls thought that looking at reactor power as a first response to any transient was important..
I implemented that along with a shirt and dress unifrom code... see it all works togethere.. if you not thinking right in the buisiness,, and you got the money to build a plant .. then you better know how your looking for to operate, and how their thinking ,, and what their priorities are..
here;s the test.. as a senior company employee.. when you get a call at night.. does your seniour plant staff say .. hi
this is ... name position and title and unit
the status of the plant.. stable or not
the problem and the procedures being followed
the impairments, and regulatory limits exceeded..
the help and resourses required.. including engineering
his recommendations and the path forward.
I don't think so
sincerely Robert Macdonald rwm888@hotmail.com
Great discussion. I have been licensed at two different PWRs. One in the mid 90s and the second just a couple of years ago. I was near the weeded out point strictly on the written exam on this last one. My simulator and JPM performance was toted as very good. When you have to spend 15 minutes trying to figure out what the question is asking vice trying to answer it, this in no way tests the persons ability to operate. One question on the exam required knowing a temperature (within 5 degrees) from a recovery emergency procedure on step 12 or 13 in the RNO. This question would have been a killer if you had the ability to look up the information. I am afraid we (industry) are starting to set a standard of testing so high that only a few will ever achieve and most will avoid. This last licensing class I felt the bar was just under my chin. Just like Mark said, there are countless individuals that would have been fantastic operators that our process weeded out. I would say there are countless more that simply look at our training process and say absolutely not. In a time when we are looking for more operators we are pushing the bar to the choking point. Back to the initial argument, throughput must be from day one to NRC license. What we do with that number must be were we concentrate our discussion. We can not penalize a program that has a lower throughput number if that program is providing good operators in the end. Someone that does not make it through a license program is not stupid. They continue to be fantastic Equipment Operators or go on to work in other departments very successfully. Sounds like a good position paper subject. Mitch Taggart - Vice President.
This response was emailed to the Communicator Editor but there was no room to print it in the last issue. It is posted here with permission from the author.
The letter writer has made many good points and of course I am a training person, as you are aware :). I think I stated several times that I was speaking about the Seabrook Initial Training programs when defining how I felt "through put" should be measured. If that was not clearly expressed, my writing was not as good as I hoped it would be. Over the many years of the Seabrook Initial License classes they have remained at the same approximate length and content, so I felt comfortable making that judgment statement. Obviously the way it is currently defined is a good measure of whether a Training Department is providing good training to the candidates for the NRC examination. If as you state the training programs are constantly changing in length and content, then that is going to do a disservice to the students. When I speak of the Training Departments needing the ability to discriminate through out the program which student makes it to the end and who may not, the basic assumption is that the Training Department has the program, experience and understanding of how the NRC licensing process works and whether candidate X, Y or Z would be able to make it through the process at any given time. You are right in that the exam questions are harder. But, it is the Training departments responsibly to prepare the students through out the license class for these higher level questions and not just at the company audit exam or the NRC exam. The new higher order questions need to be introduced at the beginning of the Initial License class and used throughout the program to prepare the students as much as possible. We also need to make sure that once an operator is licensed he/she will be able to maintain that license in the Requal programs, where the higher level questions are also being used. We don't necessarily want to "pass off" a "weak" operator to requal where it will be a struggle for both the operator and the training department for that operator to maintain the license. It becomes too much of a distraction for all involved.
I think you can see that we have the same goal and understanding of how the Training should work, but we are looking at that goal through different ends of the same telescope and seeing the different perspectives that we would naturally have as a Trainer and an Operator. Our end goal is the same and that is highly qualified operators.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback to my thoughts as expressed in the Communicator article.
Len Hubbard