Summary

Demands on Brad Nelson's group to support the FIRE PVR preparation are a major concern, since Brad's efforts are critical to the NCSX PDR preparation effort.

ACTION: Hutch work with management at ORNL (Jim and Brad) and PPPL Advanced Projects (John Schmidt).

The project is struggling with a long list of critical technical issues. They will probably not be fully resolved in time for the PDR. The PDR will not be postponed again. Therefore, we have to confront the likelihood that we will go into the PDR with significant open issues. We will have to address this forthrightly in our written and oral presentations. The task will be to convince the reviewers that in spite of these issues the project is ready to be baselined, and that plans for completing the resolution of issues are included in the baseline. We will continue to work hard on addressing the issues between now and the PDR, giving priority to those with fundamental feasibility implications or large cost and schedule uncertainties. Nonetheless, we now need to sketch out, for each of the open issues, the PDR "story" we would tell in the event the issues don't get fully resolved by then.

ACTION: Wayne pull together a draft "story" for each of the issues by July 31.

We need to turn our attention now to the deliverables we will produce for the PDR and PBR. An outline of what has to be written will help to identify any holes and get us off the dime.

ACTION: Wayne produce an outline of the PDR technical documentation package by July 31.

We also need to start planning the review, in coordination with DOE, picking the committee, drafting the charge, etc. There is also a lot of management documentation required (e.g., PEP, Risk management plan, resolurce-loaded schedule, CDR recommendations update).

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Wayne has the lead in resolving technical issues and producing all engineering deliverables.

Hutch has the lead in coordinating the review plans and producing other deliverables.

Mike will continue to lead the VE task force and support engineering needs.

ACTION:

Hutch and Jim work with management and DOE to define the review committee chair and membership, with a draft for internal review by July 24.

A few months ago, we drafted a PDR planning outline and a draft charge. So as not to lose the thinking that went into it, updates of these are attached. The charge had a fair amount of buy-in from DOE so we probably don't want to tinker with it much. As already noted, we need to come to closure on the committee makeup soon.

We will meet with Rich later in the week (July 24) to discuss a realistic assessment of our issues and our expected position on them at the time of the PDR.

The budgetary cost estimate provided by one of the MCWF suppliers is substantially higher than expectations and is skewing the estimate considerably. Discussion with them indicates that they took an approach that may be unduly conservative. They need to be given an opportunity to revise their estimate to be more in keeping with our needs.

ACTION: Phil follow up.

Hutch