We are pleased to announce that the Holtec Training Center for used fuel outage implementation, long in the making, is nearing completion. The Training Center is housed at the Holtec Manufacturing Division (HMD), a 460,000 sq. feet, ASME Code Section III fabrication facility located in east Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Holtec is the only provider of dry spent fuel storage systems that manufactures 100% of its equipment destined for domestic clients in the United States. Holtec is also America’s largest exporter of manufactured SSCs to foreign markets, generating much needed manufacturing jobs in our country.
The mission of the Holtec Training Center is to provide Holtec’s Site Services Group and all users of Holtec’s dry spent fuel storage systems a central training facility to ensure that the safest and best practices are employed when loading our HI-STORM cask system at all sites. The Holtec Training Center is dedicated to providing the highest quality training services for industry-wide safety and excellence. Mr. Steven Soler, a 22-year company veteran and presently Program Manager for Site Services in the Company’s Nuclear Power Division, has been named the Director of the Holtec Training Center.
The syllabus and the newly fabricated ancillaries and equipment will be given a thorough test run in the second half of December during the first training class consisting exclusively of Holtec associates and contractors. The curriculum, which is predicated upon industry standards and best practices, is provided through the collaborative effort of classroom and hands-on training. After putting the Training Center through a trial run with our internal loading teams, the Holtec Training Center will begin accepting persons from the Holtec Users Group (HUG) membership and will also be open to USNRC personnel. The Holtec Training Center features state-of-the-art equipment and a classroom to facilitate student interaction and high levels of comprehension and understanding. The facilities have been specifically tailored to accommodate various training requirements and group sizes up to 12 persons.
“The center will provide both classroom and hands-on training so that the trainees become knowledgeable in both ‘the how and the why’ of each operational step. Our mission is to make used fuel outage implementation the most robust, safe, and ALARA event at every nuclear plant where our graduates are called upon to perform loading services”, says Director Steven Soler. Holtec’s staff experts in the site services organization will serve as instructors in the Training Center, with the expectation that the HUG membership will collaborate on this center and also serve as instructors in their field of expertise.
The Training Center is also home to Holtec’s internal MPC lid welding center, which will be available for demonstration to our students so that they may better understand the process. The Training Center is fully equipped with nearly all ancillaries and components needed for a HI-STORM loading campaign. A fully operational training station for fluid handling equipment, including the Forced Helium Dehydrator, multi-purpose pumping system, and hydrostatic test skid, are available to allow trainees to complete all critical procedural steps of MPC blowdown, drying, helium backfill, water circulation, and hydrostatic testing using the steps they will encounter in the field. A training station for lifting and handling equipment, including the lift yoke and MPC lift cleats, is available for training purposes as well. Also, a significant component of the Training Center is a training station that features a fully operational MPC stack-up and transfer configuration to allow trainees the ability to practice this critical evolution.
The classroom training includes exposure to the regulatory, technical, and operational underpinnings of dry storage technologies. The training modules emphasize lessons learned derived from the experience gathered from over 400 HI-STORM loadings over the past decade. The Training Center offers certification of the trainee as an ISFSI Professional after providing an intensive instruction in the use of all ancillaries used in dry storage implementations.
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