KILLONA – Representatives with Entergy recently announced promotions within their Nuclear Operations, affecting personnel at the Waterford 3 plant in Killona in St. Charles Parish.

Kevin Walsh, site vice president at Waterford 3, has accepted the role of site vice president at Entergy’s Arkansas Nuclear One plant in Russellville, Ark., said John Herron, senior vice president of Entergy Nuclear Operations. Herron said Walsh will replace current ANO site Vice President Tim Mitchell, who was promoted to senior vice president of engineering and technical services for Entergy Nuclear.

“The strong management experience of these leaders makes them ideal candidates to lead our nuclear fleet,” said Entergy Nuclear Chief Operating Officer Jeff Forbes in a release. “They are strong players in their roles today and I’m excited about their future with the company.”

According to a release from Entergy, during Walsh’s tenure at Waterford 3, he led the plant through Hurricane Katrina as general manager. He was able to gain restart approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency eight days after the storm and had the plant up and running at full operation about a week later. Walsh also helped lead the site to four consecutive Institute of Nuclear Power Operations excellence awards and has operated the plant through 15 million labor hours without a lost-time accident, spanning nearly 12 years.

Walsh joined Entergy in 1989 following an eight-year career in the Navy nuclear program. He received his senior reactor operator license in 1995 and has held a number of roles during his stint at Waterford including operations manager, shift manager and outage manager.  

Walsh’s replacement at Waterford 3 will be plant General Manager Joe Kowalewski, who joined the company in 1988 after working with Detroit Edison’s nuclear plant in Monroe, Mich.

Kowalewski spent time as general manager and director of engineering a ANO before becoming general manager at Waterford in June of 2007. Along with Walsh, Kowalewski led the plant to the completion of a mid-cycle outage and refuel outage with no Occupational Safety and Health Administration recordable accidents. He helped lead the site through a successful mitigation strategy for a first of a kind degradation mechanism of steam generators, eliminating the need for repetitive mid-cycle outages. 

Kowalewski’s replacement will be determined at a later date and effective dates for the transition will be established at that time.