On maintenance, outages, and masks

摘要

In the days before I wrote this column in the ANS offices located in Illinois, the state's governor announced a mandate for wearing masks indoors in public areas, again. The announcement was the result of zooming COVID-19 cases in the state, reportedly due to the Delta variant. How long this new mandate would stay in effect was anyone's guess. Mask wearing can be a minor inconvenience, but life goes on, which includes working at nuclear power plants. It's the fall season now and refueling outages at some plants are taking place. "Plant Maintenance and Outages" is the theme of this issue of Nuclear News, where on the following pages are feature articles on the subject.