The North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) teamed up with Clean Energy Insight for the 2011 NA-YGN Drawing Contest.  In light of the events at Fukushima Nuclear Plant, the contest focused on nuclear power on an international scale with the theme,  “Roddy Nuclear Powers the World.”  Roddy is a nuclear fuel pellet, and an NA-YGN mascot, and he is predominantly featured in this year’s drawing contest posters.

NA-YGN would like to thank all chapters for their participation. Your support of this program ensures that the new “young generation” has clear information on nuclear power, and can make informed decisions about our energy future.

This year, voting took place on the CEI website in order to expand our voting audience and to draw attention to this site. Over 250 visitors to the site voted, and for that, we thank you!

We are proud to announce the contest winners:

First Place: Giovanni Valforte, Myrtle Avenue Elementary

First Runner-Up: Olivia Whitacre, St. Teresa of Avila

Second Runner-Up: Matthew McHugh, St. Teresa of Avila

Winners will receive an NA-YGN t-shirt, science kit, and books for themselves and their schools.

We encourage all NA-YGN Chapters to participate in the 2012 Drawing Contest, which will be 100% digital for the first time. If you have any feedback or questions about the Drawing Contest, or would like to assist in 2012, please contact Andrea Davis of the NA-YGN Triangle Chapter at .

Two North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) members recently offered their thoughts and advice in a guest article on the ANS Nuclear Cafe Blog, encouraging young members of the nuclear energy industry to take complete personal responsibility of  their professional development.

Learning to take charge of my professional and personal development has been the biggest lesson I’ve learned during my first 4 years in the nuclear energy industry, and I felt this article was relevant to my experiences and needs as a young member thus far.  I hope that it helps other NA-YGN members get a head start on their development.

Great job on the article, Jennifer and Elizabeth - although it was published a day too late to help me with my annual appraisal with my supervisor!

Development: Taking Charge of Your Career

Posted on January 18, 2012
By Elizabeth McAndrews-Benavides and Jennifer Varnedoe

Every member of the nuclear industry has a responsibility to focus on his or her own career development as a component of continuous improvement. While this is good advice, young professionals often struggle with how to identify these development opportunities. The question of how to overcome this challenge spirited discussion at the 2011 Young Professionals Conference.

“Young professionals are told to ask for opportunities and additional responsibilities in order to develop ourselves, but we’re never given examples of what opportunities our employers think we should be looking for,” said Adam Nygaard, a member of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN). “I believe that career development is the primary responsibility of the individual, but employers are stakeholders as well. It’s good that they have finally provided guidance and are working toward closing the knowledge and experience gap in our industry.”

The good news is that young professionals no longer have to guess at the answer to this question. The U.S. electric industry, through the Center for Energy Workforce Development, has created two new resources to help industry leaders, educators, and young professionals navigate development.

These resources are competency models that lay out the knowledge, skills, and abilities that every new employee should master to become a fully competent energy worker. The energy industry is using these models to develop new energy education programs and to improve industry training to ensure that there are qualified energy workers readily available to replace retirees.

“Competency models are a great resource for young professionals to reference before heading into their annual appraisals with their supervisors,” said Gale Hauck, co-chair of the ANS Young Members Group. “These models make it easy for employees to identify their own development gaps and to ask supervisors to include the appropriate opportunities to close these gaps in their personal development plans.”

The Energy Industry Competency Model: Generation, Transmission and Distribution is made up of stacked tiers divided by blocks representing competencies. Each block represents a focus area that needs to be developed in new energy workers. This resource was developed to help non-licensed operators, maintenance personnel, and technicians.

The Engineering Competency Model builds off of the previous model and replaces the top three tiers with engineering-specific competencies. Once an engineer meets all of the entry level competencies they can move on to the 3+-year-experienced engineer competencies.

Hauck said, “It’s nice to have a development road map. Young professionals no longer have to struggle to figure out what development opportunities they need, they can focus on being developed.”

Chris Hearn, U.S. Affairs chair of NA-YGN, added, “Now that these resources are available, conference planning committees and local chapters of NA-YGN can use this information to design professional development sessions. All you have to do is look at the competency model and identify which competency your members need the most help with.”

North American Young Generation in Nuclear is a professional society for those working in nuclear science and technology. It has 8,500 members and 97 local chapters. The ANS Young Members Group is a technical group of the American Nuclear Society with more 1,000 members.

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Jennifer Varnedoe is chair of the ANS Young Members Group. She is a project engineer with Advanced Programs at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. She has been an ANS member since 2007 and is a guest contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Elizabeth is past president of NA-YGN. She is manager of Industry Infrastructure at the Nuclear Energy Institute. In this role she is focused on work force development and supply chain issues for the nuclear industry. Prior to this job, she worked for Constellation Energy in its new nuclear division, UniStar Nuclear.

How often do you think about where the electricity you use to power your lights, computer and television comes from? Chances are not often, if ever.

This past October, the Michigan American Nuclear Society hosted an essay contest as part of Careers in Energy Week asking high school students to do just that. The “Get into Nuclear Energy” essay contest targeted raising awareness of nuclear energy careers among Michigan high school students. The contest asked students to explain why nuclear energy workers have and continue to improve our local communities. The contest, which was funded by an Entergy Nuclear grant, awarded the first, second, and third place winners with an iPad, iTouch, and iPod Nano, respectively. The contest also awarded the schools with the highest percentage of participation with a monetary donation to their science department.

The contest ran over a two-week period and resulted in the society receiving over 400 essays. The contest winners were spread across the state and even into the Upper Peninsula! The winning essays will be posted on our website. The first, second, and third place student winners are as follows:

1. Megan Locatis, Allegan High School;
2. Carolyn Payson, Battle Creek Math and Science Cetner;
3. Jessica Barjaktarovich, Macomb Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Here is a link to their essays.

The schools with the highest participation were:

• Big Bay De Noc High School,
• Columbia Central High School, and
• Charyl Stockwell Preparatory Academy.

Having read over 100 essays myself, I can say that I was immensely excited to see the amount of research and effort that the students and teachers put into exploring careers options in the nuclear field. The essays highlighted the important impact nuclear energy workers have on ensuring that our communities stay functional through both the production of electricity and philanthropic work. The overall goal of the contest was to expose high school students to careers in the nuclear sciences and hopefully spark an early interest in future career choices.

The Michigan American Nuclear Society is looking forward to hosting another essay contest to ring in National Nuclear Science Week. This time around the contest wil ask high school students to write a persuasive letter to their local Congressperson or Senator describing why nuclear energy should continue be a part of our national energy portfolio.

During last week’s Young Professionals Congress, dozens participated in a new training activity designed to solicit tacit knowledge from experienced professionals. Members from both the American Nuclear Society’s Young Members Group (ANS-YMG) and North America Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) created this activity.

“This training was timely,” said Jennifer Varnedoe Chair of the ANS-YMG. “Many in the nuclear sector are nearing retirement and young professionals need to capture their tacit knowledge before they leave.”

Duncan Robinson, President of NA-YGN, said “that the young generation needs to take ownership and find ways to mitigate issues with knowledge transfer.” They will be the stakeholders that will have to deal with the ramifications if this is done poorly.

Finding ways to improve the capturing of knowledge was a goal for the developers of this training. “Many times, all it takes is for a young professional to ask for information,” said Michael Hope, one of the NA-YGN training developers.

The Power of Question Asking taught participants how to ask open ended questions to gain tacit knowledge. The participants practiced this skill by asking questions to five facilitators while playing a competitive game where the goal was to see who could complete a Lego construction project the fastest. Participants had to ask the facilitators for help because they weren’t provided all of the instructions to complete the Lego log cabin.

The five facilitators roll played different characters to allow participants the opportunity to practice formulating open ended questions for different audiences which added a layer of difficulty. Peter Caracappa, Chair of the 2012 Young Professionals Congress Embedded Topical, said “it was amazing to see the participants trying to formulate open ended questions. It was obvious during the training that this is a skill that the young generation must cultivate.”

NA-YGN and the ANS-YMG plan to make the lesson plan and Lego kits available for use at future meetings.

North American Young Generation in Nuclear is a professional society for those working in nuclear science and technology; they have 8,500 members and 96 local chapters. The Young Members Group is a technical group of the American Nuclear Society with over 1,000 members.

Peter Carracapa KT&R DLA Facilitator describes his role in the activity

KT&R DLA Participant describes his experience

North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) recently held their 13th Annual “Roddy Nuclear” Drawing contest all over North America.  Roddy Nuclear is a nuclear fuel pellet cartoon character who can fit into the palm of a child’s hand.  In fact, Roddy provides as much energy as almost two-thousand pounds of coal and 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas!

NA-YGN members used Roddy’s adventures to present the benefits of nuclear energy to over 1,000 4th and 5th grade students in this year’s contest.  The theme for the contest was “Roddy Nuclear Powers the World.“  Students were asked to submit drawings inspired by the theme and what they learned during the presentations.

NA-YGN would like to thank all of it’s participating members along with all of the educators who contributed to the success of this year’s contest.  Now, we just have to pick a winner!

Click here to vote for the winner:

2011 NA-YGN Drawing Contest Voting

The voting deadline is January 13th, 2012.

The winners (1st place, Runner-up, First Runner up) will be announced during National Nuclear Science Week — January 23rd, 2012.

Click HERE to view last year’s 2010 Drawing Contest Winners.

On November 1, 2011, several North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) members attended the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) public meeting for the potential restart of Dominion Power’s North Anna Power Station (NAPS). The purpose of the meeting was for the NRC and Dominion to provide members of the public with the status of inspections and current information for NAPS after the August 23rd earthquake in Mineral, VA.

Dominion Energy's North Anna Nuclear Power Station

The first half of the meeting allowed Dominion and the NRC to discuss their findings. To date, neither Dominion nor the NRC has identified any significant damage to essential safety systems of NAPS. Inspections and reviews continue to ensure the safety of the plants prior to restart. No date has yet been targeted for restart of the plants.

The second half of the meeting involved public commentary and questions for the NRC and Dominion. Public responses and questions varied, but several audience members indicated mistrust of Dominion and the NRC to ensure the safety of the power plant. The telling moment of NA-YGN’s presence occurred when one member of the audience questioned whether Dominion had paid individuals to come-out wearing t-shirts and buttons that advocated for nuclear power. There was a loud response of “NO” from the crowd and a cynical rebuttal from the questioning individual: “I guess you all must just be fans of nuclear power.”

As hard as it may be for some to understand, there are people that are proud to show support for nuclear power.

On Thursday, November 3^rd, approximately 90 American Nuclear Society members ended their annual winter meeting with a Capitol Hill visit. Constituents from over 20 states visited with their elected officials and their staffers to promote nuclear energy.

Pictured from L to R: Jennifer Varnedoe (Progress Energy), Eric Helin (GE Hitachi), Myron Koblansky (Westinghouse), Adam Nygaard (Duke Energy)

Hill Visit team and topic:

The North Carolina team represented a variety of nuclear companies that reach across the state. The team’s previous experience at communicating with policy makers ranged from first timers to experienced veterans. While the primary purpose of the hill visit was to support nuclear in general; our team decided to raise attention to the recent letter from the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization to Senators Feinstein and Alexander.

The letter, signed by all Nuclear Engineering Department Heads, encourages congress to restore funding for U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) nuclear research and development programs as well as the Integrated University Program (IUP) as Fiscal Year 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations are being finalized. The team discussed the upcoming labor shortage in the nuclear industry and the need for stable, successful nuclear engineering programs.

The Hill Visit:

The first appointment of the day was with Kara Weishaar, the Energy Legislative Assistant (LA) for Senator Richard Burr (R-NC). Kara was very friendly with the ANS group and re-assured Senator Burr’s support of nuclear energy as a clean and reliable source of electricity.

House of Representative Member Melvin Watt (D-12^th/NC) supports a comprehensive energy policy that includes nuclear according to his Energy Legislative Assistant, Eric Love, from Charlotte.

The team also visited Senator Kay Hagan’s (D-NC) office and spoke with Energy LA Aaron Suntag. Aaron was very engaged in the conversation and expressed that Sen. Hagan was a strong supporter of nuclear. It was encouraging to learn that Aaron occasionally works with Kara from Senator Burr’s office (Democrats and Republicans can get along!)

Finally, the day ended with an appointment with Jack Huerter, Energy Legislative Assistant for Congressman Mike McIntyre (D-7^th/NC). Jack informed the ANS members that Rep. McIntyre is a strong supporter of nuclear. The congressman is concerned about domestic energy supply and realizes that nuclear must be part of the mix. As the discussion with Mr. Huerter came to a close, Congressman McIntyre unexpectedly popped in his office and agreed to a quick photo op.

The elected officials of North Carolina overwhelming support nuclear energy. This is not the case in every state. Your voice matters. Write a letter or give a phone call to your elected representative today and show your support for a nuclear future.

Pictured from L to R: C.J. Milmoe (Milmoe Consulting Services LLC), Eric Helin (GE Hitachi), Margaret Harding (4 Factor Consulting), Congressman Mike McIntyre Adam Nygaard (Duke Energy), Jennifer Varnedoe (Progress Energy)

]]> http://www.cleanenergyinsight.org/energy-insights/american-nuclear-society-visits-capitol-hill/feed/ http://www.cleanenergyinsight.org/diversions/it%e2%80%99s-not-a-job-it%e2%80%99s-an-adventure/ http://www.cleanenergyinsight.org/diversions/it%e2%80%99s-not-a-job-it%e2%80%99s-an-adventure/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 08:00:32 +0000 Elizabeth McAndrew-Benavides http://www.cleanenergyinsight.org/?p=3185 [Approx. Read Time: 1 minute]

Last week, Elizabeth McAndrew-Benavides, NA-YGN Past President, participated in the U.S. Navy’s Educational Orientation Visit (EOV) program. This unique opportunity showed participants what it is like to have a career in the U.S. Navy and expanded their understanding of the Navy’s extensive training program.

“I was very excited to participate. Navy Nukes are a traditional work force pipeline for the commercial nuclear energy industry,” said McAndrew-Benavides. “These highly trained individuals have integrated well into the safety oriented careers that the nuclear energy industry demands.”

One exciting piece of information the participants learned during this tour was that first women have begun their training that will allow them to serve on the Navy’s submarine fleet. “Hopefully I will have the opportunity to meet these ladies when they finish their first submarine tours. I’m inspired just thinking about them,” said McAndrew-Benavides.

The two day EOV program is filled with information, training and tours. Participants saw both the USS Bonhomme Richard and a Los Angeles class fast attack submarine named the USS Hampton. During a hands-on portion of the program, participants were encouraged to partake in a Damage Control (DC) training facility demonstration. This DC training locks participants in a water tight room quickly filling with water with a goal to patch leaking pipes. This training gives sailors the opportunity to practice their team building skills by performing a critical activity in a stressful environment.

At the end of the program Elizabeth said, “I appreciate the U.S. Navy and all the sailors who made my trip memorable. Even if we never work together, I’m glad there are such great guys and gals keeping the navy’s nuclear propulsion systems working safely!”

The U.S. Department of Energy has recently proposed a change to 10 CFR 810, a regulation that governs the export of peaceful nuclear technology, including for the production of electricity, to the multi-billion dollar global market. This proposed change could:

• Adversely impact competitiveness of U.S. nuclear suppliers
• Disrupt existing commercial arrangements between U.S. manufacturers and their overseas customers
• Create additional administrative burdens

Specifically, the proposed rule would:

• Require an additional bureaucratic authorization (which can take a year or longer to receive) for trade with 73 countries that do not require this export authorization today.
• Significantly expand the numbers of activities which require this type of authorization for export.
• Further bog down an already slow process by increasing the number of authorizations required for export.
• Significantly slow down the number of jobs created and brought in to U.S. manufacturers because of these delays and new bureaucratic requirements.

Please take action and visit the following link to submit a comment to Dept of Energy Secretary Stephen Chu on your thoughts of the measure:

http://consumerenergyalliance.org/calls-to-action/take-action-support-affordable-nuclear-energy/

The comment period closes on December 7th, 2011.

Let’s all support affordable nuclear energy for the future, as well as jobs in the nuclear industry that fuel economic development all over the world.

Remember, as members of NA-YGN, we can all do our part to Move Energy Forward.

The World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) announced their annual Nuclear Excellence Awards today at the conclusion of their eleventh Biennial General Meeting held in Shenzhen, China.

Susan Reilly Landahl, Chief Operation Officer of Exelon Nuclear and member of NA-YGN’s Executive Advisory Committee was one of the eight recipients this year. The Nuclear Excellence awards identify individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to excellence in the operation of nuclear power plants or infrastructure that supports their operation.

NA-YGN would like to congratulate Susan on her well-deserved award. “She has long been a strong proponent of promoting diversity within the nuclear industry,” NA-YGN Professional Development Chair Erin West said. “NA-YGN is grateful for her generous support and is glad to see her recognized by her peers for her efforts.”

Susan was recognized for her relentless pursuit of excellence, wide variety of key positions in Exelon’s fleet and her significant contribution as a mentor and role model to others in the industry, including through organizations such as U.S. Women in Nuclear and North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN).

The NA-YGN Executive Advisory Council provides guidance to the NA-YGN Board of Directors. WANO established the Nuclear Excellence Awards in 2003.