New Duane Arnold chief expects to add staff

With some of the senior staff of Iowa's only nuclear power plant approaching retirement, the new site vice president is looking to hire their successors.

Tom Vehec, a veteran nuclear power plant executive, joined NextEra Energy Duane Arnold in August after a stint at the NextEra Energy Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in Seabrook, N.H.

Vehec said some of the 425 employees directly involved in operating and maintaining the 615-megawatt power plant in Palo have worked there for decades.

'With the workforce we've had for such an extended period of time, we've been working on knowledge transfer,” Vehec said. 'We're making sure that we bring in some younger folks to be mentored in term of how things are done.”

Vehec said he is working with the plant manager and engineering director to find strategic ways to hire employees.

'We're going to focus on those areas where we have vulnerabilities from a knowledge standpoint,” he said.

Vehec said the plant, which began producing power in February 1975, just completed a planned outage that included upgrades to improve overall reliability.

'We had some feed pumps that had been there since the plant was built,” Vehec said. 'We replaced those with new pumps that actually have a little higher output. They are more efficient and are going to last for the rest of the life of the plant.”

Although Vehec was familiar with the Iowa plant due to NextEra Energy's practice of sharing plant manpower during outages, he brings a fresh perspective in terms of its culture and overall operation.

'When you have a plant like this where a number of folks have been working with each other for 20 or 25 years, you get a little less challenging environment,” he said. 'People trust that the person they've known for 25 years is going to do the right thing all the time, and maybe sometimes that doesn't happen.

'I'm able to inject some creative tension into the organization and help people understand that things are done differently elsewhere. The response of ‘We've always done it this way' may not be the best way to go this time.”

Vehec would also like to see NextEra Energy Duane Arnold have a higher profile in the community.

'I think many times people know that we're here, but they don't understand what we contribute to the overall community and the state of Iowa,” he said. 'We donate over $100,000 to different charities throughout the year, and that's not counting what our employees do in organizations where they are involved.”

'We want people to know that we're here to support the community.”