Schedule slippages, insufficient "flexibility" stated, but a revised schedule and additional resources will be used. From the Executive Summary of the Waterford Audit:

"The licensee began the formal W3 Y2K readiness program in June 1997, and finished the plant inventory and initial assessment phase in May 1998. The detailed assessment phase for systems and components that are mission critical is scheduled to be completed by December 31, 1998. Confirmatory testing of mission critical systems for Y2K readiness is conducted by the licensee at the plant site. Remediation of mission critical systems has begun. No Y2K problems have been identified in safety-related systems to date."

"The Entergy Global Year 2000 policy requires that all Mission Critical asset work projects be completed by December 31, 1998, and the work projects for Important assets be completed by June 30, 1999. However, the audit team noted that, of the 8 Mission Critical application software items, 4 will be completed in April 1999, and of the 275 Mission Critical embedded items in 25 work projects, 8 work projects are scheduled for completion by June 1999. Thus, the initially established deadline for the Mission Critical assets will not be met at W3, and this may impact the deadline for completing the Important asset work projects. Additionally, there does not appear to be sufficient flexibility in the schedules to account for unforseen delays in completing the work projects."

"To address the above schedule conflict, the licensee established a revised schedule for Y2K readiness of mission critical and important system projects by June 30, 1999. The audit team believes that, with the additional resources the licensee plans to obtain in the immediate future, the above Y2K readiness schedule appears to be achievable. This conclusion is based on the expertise and experience of the present W3 Y2K project team members, support from management, and support available via information sharing and interactions with EPRI, other licensees, the Combustion Engineering Owners Group (CEOG), plant vendors, the Southeast Electricity Reliability Council, and the North American Electric Reliability Council."

-- Anonymous, March 08, 1999

Answers

Bonnie,

Do you have a url for the above info. I find it to be extremely interesting.

-- Anonymous, March 08, 1999

Sorry, Bill, I put the URL in the "More info on Waterford" post but not here. "Duh!"

The URL: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/Y2K/Audit/Y2K50382.html

-- Anonymous, March 08, 1999

Bonnie,

I am responding to this and the other W3 post you made. I don'nt know who upsets me the most, the utility or the NRC Auditors. After reading the full audit it is clear that Entergy Operation Inc. (IOC) has an attitude.

Because the licensee was preparing for a re-fueling outage the systems and operations staff did'nt have time to spend with the NRC auditors. Hey, I thought a re-fueling outage was a normal and planned activity for a nuclear power plant. Looks like it must of swamped these guys.

I wish I was doing the performance review on the NRC Auditors. They should be fired for accepting (and publishing) the W3 schedule. The total W3 Y2K schedule consists of five activities. And talk about date standards, they don't exist! For instance "Developed Inventory" has a start date of 6/97 and a completion date of 5/98. Now when did it start, was it on 6/1/97 or 6/30/97? , same for the completion date, was it 5/1/98 or 5/31/98? There is a fog factor of about 60 days. The next activity "Classified and Prioritized Inventory" shows a start date of late 97. Now what does that mean? Of course we would have to have EOI's definition of "late" before we could even begin to figure this one out. And by the same token we would have to have "mid 1998 and early 1998" defined for the next two activities to get any idea when these activities were scheduled. Did I say scheduled? Wrong term, I meant to say date obfuseration.

It's interesting to note that the audit team 4 Mission Critical application software items and 8 work projects scheduled for completion in in June of 1999. I could'nt find any schedules that reflected that infomation. The only schedule that was included in the audit package was the hazy one discussed above. The auditors say to resolve the schedule conflict the utility has established a revised schedule so the mission critical items will be done by June 30,1999. Huh? I thought they just said they were going to be complete by June, 1999.

What is a belly buster is the following statement: " The audit team believes that, with the additional resources the licensee plans to obtain in the immediate (I wonder how they define immediate?) future, the above Y2K readiness schedule appears to be achievable. This conclusion is based on the expertise and experience (I always thought expertise and experience were the same thing) of the present W3 Y2K project team members, support from management ( unless they are tied- up in an outage) etc. etc.

Haven'nt had time to review the entire audit but wanted you to have my thoughts. I hope this audit team was not representative of the NRC audit staff.

-- Anonymous, March 08, 1999