The Story In Brief
Neil Wilmshurst, EPRI’s chief nuclear strategy officer and managing director of EPRI Gulf, is retiring effective September 30, after 22 years at the organization. In those years, he’s been instrumental in expanding EPRI’s presence internationally, especially in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima disaster, when he led EPRI’s efforts to help Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) stabilize its nuclear power industry. Since then, he’s worked to further existing global stakeholder relationships and establish new ones, particularly in the Gulf region. In a farewell interview with EPRI Journal, he looks back on his entry into the nuclear industry and his more than two decades at EPRI.
EPRI Journal: You’ve been involved in the nuclear power industry now for decades. What initially brought you to the industry?
Wilmshurst: I grew up in the UK. And when I was at school, about the age of 16 or 17, we had a school trip to the Calder Hall nuclear power station, which was the first commercial nuclear power station in the world. It all started there. Something clicked. When I left school, I joined the Royal Navy. I did a three-year engineering degree, and then went to sea and ended up navigating a destroyer off the coast of Beirut. I remember sitting on the bridge late one night, talking to the captain. He said, What do you want to do? I said, at that point, I wanted to be a nuclear submarine engineer. Six months later, I became an engineer in the Navy, and there you go. Nuclear training, off we went.
EJ: What brought you to EPRI?
Wilmshurst: What happened was that peace broke out, and the Berlin Wall came down. European powers reduced their defense spending. I decided at that point that it was time to change paths. I joined British Energy at Sizewell B, a nuclear power plant that was under construction in the UK in 1993. I went on to run the maintenance department. In 1998, British Energy and what was then PECO Energy in the US formed a partnership to buy nuclear power stations in this country, and that operation was known as Amergen. We looked at a number of plants, including Three Mile Island. We closed the deal at TMI, and I was asked to stay as the British Energy guy on the ground. Along the way, I became the lead for the vessel-head replacement project at TMI. At a conference in Florida, I met some people who convinced me that a move to EPRI would be a wonderful thing. In September 2003, I started at EPRI.
EJ: What were some of the first EPRI projects you managed?
Wilmshurst: I joined as a project manager, and within six months, I was a program manager, managing what is now the plant engineering program. Two years later, I became the senior program manager for equipment reliability for the nuclear sector.
At that point, the nuclear sector VP sent me to South Africa to sell membership to Eskom. That was the start, really, of a drive to expand EPRI internationally. I found my groove at EPRI, which was building relationships globally.
EJ: What are the duties of the chief nuclear officer role as you’ve lived it?
Wilmshurst: It was EPRI’s job to climb to the top of the hill, look over the rise, see what was coming, and be ready for it. That was the value proposition we (EPRI nuclear staff and its Chief Nuclear Officer or CNO) were providing to the industry CNOs. We were making sure that, as best we could, we saw what was coming towards them and made sure we had all the pieces in place to address it. They haven’t got the time to look into the future of technical needs. They expect us to be doing that.
I’ve got several good examples. First, for nuclear plants, the typical benchmark was that they run for 40 years, which was a financial decision, nothing else. But it needed technical work to get into 60 years. EPRI did the technical work to extend the lifespan to 60 years. Then we asked the question, why not 80 years? And that turned into what’s now known as EPRI’s Long-Term Operations program. Look how valuable that is now. Almost every nuclear plant in the US is going to extend its life to 80 years.
The second one was Fukushima. In December, before the Fukushima accident, EPRI published a report on the effectiveness and efficiency of various resins for removing cobalt from water. That report became the basis of the first water-treatment system that was set up in an emergency mode at Fukushima after the accident.
Finally, about eight years ago, there was an issue in the pressurized water reactor fleet of bolts breaking inside the reactor vessel. We had gotten our arms around that and had done all the analysis on inspection, so we were ready for that.
EJ: So, how did that event change how you saw your job?
Wilmshurst: I remember getting phone calls from various people who were saying Fukushima would result in EPRI’s funding going down. They thought that the nuclear industry would be decimated and that Japan would back away. At that point, I made two promises to myself: we’re going to do everything we can to support TEPCO, and we’re also going to do everything we can to ensure that we sustain EPRI’s nuclear funding.
And it was more than Fukushima. The Japanese prime minister told the Hamaoka plant to shut down after the Fukushima event. We happened to be there the day after Unit 5 at Hamaoka shut down, and it had a huge seawater ingress. We were able to mobilize EPRI people to help them literally that day. We earned a reputation for being there and following through on commitments we made.
EJ: As the TEPCO officials worked to contain everything, what were the most significant risks they faced?
Wilmshurst: The business case for bringing the plants back revolved around how long they were going to continue to operate. Working with the Japanese companies, EPRI managed to develop a strategy that said the aging clock for the plants stopped when they were shut down at the Fukushima event. So, those ten years of shutdown, you add that life to the end of the plant. It basically preserved the business case for bringing the plants back.
So, that’s the technical thing we did to help them. But the real lesson was that we weren’t known in Japan before Fukushima. Fukushima got us into the conversation. And into the global dialogue.
We started building relationships with global organizations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO). Then we started meeting the players in all the global nuclear companies—building those relationships, going from a conversation over coffee to a trusting relationship where people start joining EPRI. And then the technical people show the value, and the whole thing grows.
Every culture is different. EPRI nuclear membership grew from being pretty much US-only to representing more than eighty percent of the world’s reactors.
EJ: Why is connecting globally important for overall nuclear development?
Wilmshurst: Well, nuclear is unique in that nuclear companies collaborate very well together. In EPRI’s technical scope, we had the answers to many of the questions that these companies were trying to address. We focused on making sure we had the right scope. And then it became compelling to say, we’ve got the answers you need, come join us.
EJ: Do you think there was some kind of secret sauce that your team brought to this effort?
Wilmshurst: A long-term reputation for knowing what the industry needs and doing it in the right time frame. And the US nuclear fleet is really important to that success. The US nuclear fleet is the oldest fleet in the world, so it tends to see things before the rest of the world. That gave us an angle as well, and we could actually interpret that for the rest of the world.
EJ: It sounds like the Gulf is becoming a bigger area of attention. Why is that?
Wilmshurst: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) started thinking about how to reduce its carbon footprint. So, the UAE got ahead of the curve and built four nuclear power plants at Barakah. So that’s how I first got involved in the Gulf, using the same approach of building relationships.
As these countries start building out infrastructure, there’s an incredible opportunity to learn from them. You think about integrating solar or building nuclear plants in different environments. You can learn a considerable amount from these operations, and they can learn a lot from other countries because they’re trying to catch up very quickly. EPRI is perfectly positioned to help accelerate that learning. It’s two ways. They need us, we need them.
EJ: What are you most proud of with your work at EPRI? Is there a legacy you hope to pass on?
Wilmshurst: Obviously, the Fukushima work. Another thing I’m really proud of is the Global Forum for Nuclear Innovation, working with the IAEA, OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, and the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory. It brings people around the world together to understand how to break through the barriers to innovation in nuclear. The other ones are training and workforce development, pushing to increase EPRI’s footprint and impact in training. As I walk out the door, it’s starting to bear fruit. Because everything is about transferring information to people. Training people to be more effective at their jobs is essential.
