Aging of steel containments and liners in nuclear power plants

Conference · Thu Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1998

OSTI ID:650369

Naus, D J; Oland, C B ^[1]; Ellingwood, B ^[2]; Norris, W E ^[3]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States). Engineering Technology Div.
2. Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD (United States). Dept. of Civil Engineering
3. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States). Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research

Aging of the containment pressure boundary in light water reactor plants is being addressed to understand the significant factors relating occurrence of corrosion efficacy of inspection and structural capacity reduction of steel containments and liners of concrete containments. and to make recommendations on use of risk models in regulatory decisions. Current regulatory in-service inspection requirements are reviewed and a summary of containment related degradation experience is presented. Current and emerging nondestructive examination techniques and a degradation assessment methodology for characterizing and quantifying the amount of damage present are described. Quantitative tools for condition assessment of aging structures using time dependent structural reliability analysis methods are summarized. Such methods provide a framework for addressing the uncertainties attendant to aging in the decision process. Results of this research provide a means for establishing current and estimating future structural capacity margins of containments, and to address the significance of incidences of reported containment degradation.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-96OR22464
• OSTI ID: 650369
• Report Number(s): ORNL/CP--96080; CONF-980708--; ON: DE98005043; BR: 41100106; CNN: Agreement 1886-8653-6W; Agreement 1886-N604-35
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
AGING
CONCRETES
CONTAINMENT SHELLS
CORROSION
IN-SERVICE INSPECTION
LINERS
NONDESTRUCTIVE TESTING
STEELS
SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
WATER COOLED REACTORS