I know this program pretty well. I was the program coordinator for many years and I wrote the original Program and Course Summary for it. The nice thing about this is that I’ll be able to do what I consider the fun stuff without having the responsibility of running the class.

The hallway in the picture is actually a hallway in the training center where I worked. In fact, my office was about halfway down on the right. I took this picture on one of the last days of work there.

My initial training as a reactor operator in 1981 and ’82 and, later, as a senior reactor operator was in classrooms down this same hall on the left.

Providing the funding issue is worked out, I would likely be working in one of the offices down this hall. There’s a few vacant spots. I won’t have the same desk as before as someone else has got it. (I did notice, when I was in there today, that some of my old notebooks are still in the bookcase.)

I was hired as an operations training instructor in April 1983 and I retired from basically the same job, though the title had been changed several times, early last year. We taught the people in the Operations Department, the people who operate the plant. We also had to attend all of the same training as the operators and maintain our qualifications.

The Operations Department and Operations Training both have had a relatively low turnover rate. I’ve known all but one of the Unit One Ops training staff for over ten years. One of the guys that I’ll be working with started there shortly before I did and was in the same initial reactor operator class that I was in. One of the guys in the group with the least time with the company was in the first license class that I ran back in 1992. I first met one fellow that is retiring at the end of this month back in the summer of 1976 in the engine room of the USS Casimir Pulaski in Holy Loch, Scotland.

Most of what I’m going to be doing — I think, and providing the funding comes through — will be associated with casualty training of the license class in both the classroom and the simulator.

During casualty training, the reactor operator and senior reactor operator students are taught together in teams, because that’s how they will be tested by the NRC, in teams.

I know every individual in the class. I don’t know most of the reactor operator candidates very well, but I know them well enough to talk to them. I know all of the senior reactor operator candidates very well. All of them were recent students of mine in one of the recent license classes that I ran.