PWR Owners Group

Creating Member Value and High Return on Investment

The PWROG consists of 1,800 members representing utilities that own a combined 180 Pressurized Water Reactor-designed nuclear power plants all over the world. Utility representatives lead all aspects of the organization and decide which issues the PWROG will address.

The mission of the PWROG is to improve the competitiveness of member plants through cost-effective resolution of issues that are common to more than one member and to provide a superior regulatory interface in support of member activities. The origin of the PWROG dates back to the late 1970s, when three vendor owners groups were formed following the Three Mile Island event.

The overall organizational structure of the PWROG is similar to that of a standard business, with technical, operational, management and executive levels. Technical committees provide utility perspectives of high-priority needs; the management committee provides industry oversight of solutions that offer the highest benefit to each member; and the executive committee provides strategic direction and oversight for the entire organization. Additionally, our Emergent Issues Group supports a rapid communications process that enhances the definition, communication, and resolution of potential and emerging industry issues.

If you have questions regarding the PWR Owners Group, please contact Tom Laubham, program director at laubhatj@westinghouse.com.

How the PWROG Helps Utilities Control Costs

Thanks to cost sharing, the PWROG resolves issues at a fraction of the normal cost, while the implementation of just a few key projects WILL pay back to the utility the cost of their membership. PWROG members average greater than 85% implementation of all PWROG deliverables.

The return on investment is as high as 30:1 on average across all projects and may even be higher in many project-specific instances.

As former PWROG Executive Chair Maria Lacal recently said, “eliminating duplicated efforts and building on industry group synergies —such as PWROG, BWROG, EPRI, NEI, and DOE — ensures we achieve our goals efficiently and effectively for our greatest return on investment. Our ability to control costs by sharing our precious resources around our common safety and reliability issues is crucial to maintaining our fleet’s long-term viability.”

The PWROG’s project structure has both fixed (generic) and optional (cafeteria) components, each of which are funded on a share-based system. The PWROG assigns shares to each member based on the number of nuclear units they own. The first unit on a site counts as one share and each additional unit on that site adds a quarter-share.

Generic projects are applicable to the entire membership (domestic and international). These are funded from the fixed base membership fee for domestic and international members.
Cafeteria projects are applicable to any subset of the membership and funded separately from the fixed base membership fee. For international members, the fixed base membership fees also cover cafeteria projects that are applicable to one or more complete NSSS-sets and have 72% or more of the applicable domestic members participating. Otherwise, additional fees are required for international members to participate in a cafeteria project. No utility pays more than 13 cents (on the dollar) of any generic project; project costs are less than $5 per engineering hour.

Regulatory Support

The PWROG is able to address regulatory issues with the NRC collectively, meaning that all of the members have the ability to address generic issues consistently. The NRC values this approach because it helps the industry be more efficient, while the utility benefits from strength in numbers and a united front when working with the agency.

Benefits

Provide common solutions with costs shared globally among members
ROI is minimum of 30:1
Support member activities through superior regulatory interface
Rapid response to critical needs (Emergent Issues Group)
International organization, providing global perspective to all solutions
Collaborates with other industry organizations to leverage a wide variety of expertise
Implementation of PWROG projects by members averages 85%
Implementation of a few key projects WILL pay back to the utility the cost of their membership