Chuck Kharrl

Vice President, Operations Support

Southern Nuclear Corporation

Chuck Kharrl is the Vice President of Operations Support. In this role, he is responsible for Fleet Governance & Oversight, Fleet Capital Projects and Fleet Outage Services for Southern Nuclear Corporation. Chuck has more than 30 years of experience in the nuclear industry and has held Vice President positions at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and most recently at Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant. Chuck has held Senior Reactor Operator licenses at Palo Verde, Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station and St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant. He graduated from Naval Nuclear Power School and earned his master's degree in business administration from the University of Arizona.

Clinton E. Carter

USA Director - Fleet Modernization

Utilities Service Alliance

Clinton Carter is the USA Director - Fleet Modernization. He is the Principal Investigator for implementing the USA Advanced Remote Monitoring and Diagnostic Services Project (ARM), a DOE sponsored initiative to develop, deploy and evaluate technology-based systems in nuclear energy facilities to improve efficiencies while lowering operating expenses.
Mr. Carter has 37 years of electric utility experience, including expertise gained through a variety of positions at the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant, where he was a licensed Senior Reactor Operator.
A pioneer of the industrial internet, Mr. Carter led the deployment of the world's largest wireless industrial infrastructure supporting voice communications, mobile computing, and equipment condition monitoring at Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant. Carter was the original architect of Luminant's Power Optimization Center located in Irving, Texas. Today, the POC is recognized across the industry as the gold standard for delivering advanced monitoring and diagnostics services to nuclear, fossil and renewables generating facilities.
Mr. Carter holds a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Kansas State University, an M.S. in Engineering Technology from the University of North Texas and an MBA from Texas Christian University.

Patrick Burke

Nuclear Vice President, Strategy

Xcel Energy

Patrick Burke is Nuclear Vice President Strategy. Responsible for developing the strategy and business plans for the Nuclear Business Unit of Xcel Energy. This includes leading the Innovation, Government and Policy, Transformation and used fuel teams.
He previously held the Nuclear Vice President, Engineering and Technical Services position for Xcel Energy. Responsibilities included leading fleet engineering, capital projects, refueling outages, new fuels and used fuels storage functions.
Patrick joined the Xcel Energy engineering organization in 1991 at the Monticello nuclear generating facility. He held numerous positions in site engineering and capital projects. After 20 years at Monticello he transitioned to a fleet role as Director Nuclear Projects managing the capital projects and controls group, capital budgets, rate case support and project management processes. He served as the Vice President Capital Projects leading the fleet capital projects department as well as dry fuels storage and the corporate outage departments.
Patrick received his bachelor science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also holds a BWR Senior Reactor Operator certification, is a registered professional engineering in the state of Minnesota, and is a Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute.

Dan Bierbrauer

Technology Director

Southern Nuclear Corporation

Dan is currently the Technology Director for Southern Nuclear. In this role, Dan’s primary responsibility is to provide leadership and oversight of the Information Technology department and ensure alignment of Southern Nuclear strategic technology initiatives. Most recently, Dan served as the IT-General Manager for Southern Nuclear and as the Cyber Security Manager at Vogtle 3&4. Prior to joining Southern Company in 2013, Dan worked at Exelon/Constellation for 23 years in various roles of increasing responsibility in Nuclear Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, Information Technology, Cyber Security, Emergency Preparedness, Licensing and Security. Dan earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo, a Master's degree in Management from the State University of New York at Oswego and a Master's degree in Information Technology from Syracuse University. He previously held a Senior Reactor Operator and Site Nuclear Engineering Certification. Lastly, Dan remains active in NITSL, NIRMA and EPRI and also served as the NITSL Executive Committee Chair in 2019. He currently resides in the Birmingham Area with his wife, Kendra and family.

Johanna Oxtrand

INL

Ms. Johanna Oxstrand has 17 years of experience conducting human factors research and engineering in the nuclear industry. Before joining Idaho National Laboratory (INL) as a human factors scientist in 2010, she led human factors and human reliability assessment activities at the Ringhals Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden. Oxstrand initiated and led the two industry-wide initiatives: Nuclear Electronic Work Packages – Enterprise Requirements (NEWPER) and Dynamic Instructions Editing Tool Requirements (DIRECTOR). These initiatives brought a broad range of stakeholders and decision makers together to move towards a transition to computerized work processes. The initiatives resulted in 3 industry standards published by the Procedure Professionals Association.
Oxstrand's research leverage advanced technologies to determine the best human-system interaction to increase overall efficiency and improve human performance within the nuclear industry. Oxstrand leads multiple Department of Energy efforts to support the utilization of dynamic instructions in the nuclear industry and beyond. Oxstrand has a Master of Science degree in software engineering from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

Dr. Bruce Hallbert, Ph.D.

Director, Technical Integration Office

INL, LWRS

Bruce Hallbert leads the Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program, a DOE-sponsored multi-laboratory, multi-disciplinary program that conducts collaborative research with stakeholders of the commercial nuclear power industry. Its goal is to sustain U.S. nuclear power generation assets.

Education:

• Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, 2010, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Memberships:

• Past President of the International Association of Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management
• Past Member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation
• American Nuclear Society
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

S. Jason Remer, P.E.

Lead Researcher and Industry Liaison

INL, LWRS

Mr. Remer currently serves in the LWRS program leading the Integrated Operations for Nuclear (ION) program. In that capacity he is responsible for developing new business models that can reduce O&M costs by one-third through integrating new technologies, reformed business processes and human performance improvements. He is also involved in increasing the value of R&D efforts produced at INL by focusing and integrating research pathways for maximum benefit to the current fleet.
Formerly Mr. Remer was Director, Life Extension and New Technology for the Nuclear Energy Institute where he was responsible for Digital I&C innovation and Second License Renewal. Mr. Remer was awarded the 2015 American Nuclear Society (ANS) President’s Award for outstanding contribution to nuclear industry. Mr. Remer was also Vice President of Parsons Infrastructure and Technology Corporation, an international engineering and technology company. He performed extensive engineering, licensing, and design evaluations for nuclear power, enrichment facilities, a fusion reactor, solar, biofuel and other advanced energy systems.
Previously, Mr. Remer was the Program Director for the Next Generation Systems Development at DOE, responsible for the Gen IV and Nuclear Hydrogen development efforts. In 2001, Mr. Remer served the Chairman of the US House Energy and Commerce Committee as an IEEE/AAAS Fellow leading legislative efforts on energy, security and nuclear power issues. Mr. Remer holds a BS in Engineering from Arkansas Tech University and is a licensed professional engineer in the same state. Mr. Remer completed a distinguished 18-year career at Arkansas Nuclear One nuclear power plant serving in various design engineering and management positions.

Ricardo Rivera

NextEra / FPL

Ricardo Rivera is manager of product management, delivery, for NextEra Energy Nuclear IT. In this role, Ricardo is responsible for developing deployment strategy and scope for the Nuclear Fleet Center of Work Excellence.
Ricardo previously served as nuclear manager, Center of Work Excellence execution work stream area, which included creation of work request, screening, planning and scheduling tools, and field execution. In this role, Ricardo oversaw the delivery of minimum viable products for five applications that integrated aspects of the work management process. Ricardo also recently completed a two-year term as an advisor for Electric Power Research Institute’s plant modernization committee.
Ricardo joined the NextEra Energy team in 2008 supporting its nuclear extended power uprate projects. Since that time, he has held a number of positions in NextEra Energy’s nuclear fleet, including project controls manager, corporate functional area manager for work management, and process improvement lead. Ricardo holds a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from University of Puerto Rico, as well as a Six Sigma black belt certification from Honeywell, for which he completed two U.S. patent applications.

Lourdes Porro

Regulatory Projects Manager

NextEra / FPL

Lourdes is the Digital Procedure Transformation Team product owner for the NextEra Energy Nuclear Center for Work Excellence. Responsibilities include managing the procedure conversion for four sites (7 reactors) as well as coordinating NextAxiom releases to production including software quality assurance testing.
Lourdes first joined Florida Power and Light as a summer intern in 1985 and shortly thereafter as a Nuclear Fuels Engineer. Over the years, she has held various positions at Corporate and St. Lucie Nuclear Plant in Nuclear Fuels, Regulatory Projects, Reactor & Programs Engineering, Training Simulator, and Operations.
Lourdes earned her B.S. in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Florida and her NRC Senior Reactor Operator license at St. Lucie Nuclear Plant.

Sean Lawrie joined ScottMadden in 2005. He possesses expertise across a broad range of functions within the energy sector, including generation, transmission and distribution, and new generation development.
Sean has been fortunate to work on several topics facing our industry today, ranging from digital transformation, strategic and business planning, cost management, cyber security (NERC-CIP), operational improvements for nuclear and fossil operations as well as transmission and distribution companies.
Prior to joining ScottMadden, Sean worked for several General Electric businesses including GE Energy where he was a secondary side engineer at the Bruce Power site. He achieved his SixSigma black belt from his work at GE. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Guelph and earned an M.B.A. from the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University.
In his free time he coaches in the Jr. Hurricanes girls hockey organization, and plays hockey himself, of course because he's Canadian, eh.