FirstEnergy Nuclear Fleet Achieves Best Year Ever For Personal Safety
Akron, OH - FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company recently announced that its fleet of power plants — The Beaver Valley Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania; the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio; and the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, Ohio — achieved its best results ever for personal safety, with one federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recordable incident in 2006.
This places FENOC in the nuclear industry's top decile for personal safety performance in 2006 with an OSHA incident rate of 0.03, signaling a significant improvement in the company's industrial safety record. During 2005, FENOC's plants experienced 12 OSHA-recordable incidents.
FENOC President and Chief Nuclear Officer Gary Leidich noted the company's improved safety record is a significant achievement for employees, especially considering the heavy schedule of plant outages for refueling and other work that occurred in 2006. He specifically cited:the 65-day refueling and refurbishment outage at Beaver Valley Unit 1 in the spring, during which all three steam generators and the reactor vessel head were replaced; a refueling and maintenance outage at Beaver Valley Unit 2 in the fall,which included major turbine work, containment sump modifications and weld overlay reinforcement of primary coolant circuit components; a refueling in the spring and a planned maintenance outage in the fall at Davis-Besse.
Altogether the fleet posted 5.9 million worker-hours for the year, of which these projects accounted for approximately 1.3 million worker-hours.
Mr. Leidich credited a number of factors for the improvement, including a revitalized and refocused safety effort at every level of the company. FENOC formed management-level safety committees at each plant to oversee safety activities, reinforced the importance of conducting monthly safety meetings among all plant work sections and involved plant Duty Management Teams in promoting a more visible safety focus to all employees.
"The turn of a calendar page starts a brand new year," said Mr. Leidich. "We're gratified with last year's performance, but now our focus is striving to make 2007 the first perfect year for personal safety in our fleet's history."
FENOC is a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. A diversified energy company headquartered in Akron, Ohio.
SOURCE: FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company