Extending nuclear power plant licenses efficiently

Renewing nuclear reactor licenses will be streamlined thanks in part to two documents created by Argonne engineers together with staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The documents are based on surveys and evaluations of hundreds of industry and NRC reports on plant aging management, including results of two decades of Argonne research on the aging and material wear of light-water reactor structures and components.

Nuclear power provides 20 percent of the nation’s electricity generation capacity, and the average nuclear power plant generates electricity as cheaply as any baseload power available including coal-fired fossil.

"Keeping the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants safely operating an additional 20 years can have a tremendous socio-economic and environmental impact on the nation," explained project manager and nuclear engineer Yung Liu. He added that every nuclear power plant also prevents 1.2 million metric tons of carbon-equivalent greenhouse gases from being added to the atmosphere each year.

As the nation’s nuclear power plants approach the end of their 40-year licenses, utilities can request 20-year license extensions through the NRC. So far, only two plants have undergone this costly, stringent, 30-month-long process, which includes rigorous safety and environmental reviews, inspections and public hearings, but dozens more are expected to apply in the next 10 to 15 years.

Nuclear-aging research at Argonne supports light-water reactors in commercial nuclear power plants throughout the world. Argonne engineers use state-of-the-art facilities to understand such aging processes as corrosion and fatigue of critical reactor components in valves and in welds in reactor vessels.

Combining this extensive knowledge with contributions from Brookhaven and the NRC, Argonne created the more than 1,000- page-long Generic Aging Lessons Learned (GALL) Report and the Standard Review Plan for License Renewal (SRP) for the NRC. These documents are designed to standardize and streamline license renewal for utilities and the NRC.

The GALL Report provides generic evaluation of existing plant aging management programs for structures and components in light-water reactors, including the reactor vessel, reactor coolant system piping, steam generators, pressurizers, pump casings and valve bodies. GALL lists 45 evaluated, generic aging management programs. Utilities and NRC staff can use these evaluation results to determine if existing plant programs are adequate or need to be augmented for license renewal.

The Standard Review Plan, which was designed to use the generic evaluation in the GALL report, will help to ensure the quality and uniformity of safety reviews of license renewal applications by NRC staff.

Stakeholders such as utilities, concerned citizens, public interest groups and organizations including the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists provided input for these documents.

The documents are available through the NRC at www.nrc.gov/NRC/REACTOR/LR/.

For more information please contact Evelyn Brown