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Obsolescence and the ability to obtain qualified replacement and spare parts are primary concerns in the nuclear industry. In fact, approximately 35% of installed equipment is obsolete.

Westinghouse Parts Business (WPB) has over 50 years of experience replacing and upgrading systems for operating nuclear power plants with access to original design information as the original equipment manufacturer (OEM).

WPB provides innovative, cost-efficient solutions for Westinghouse and non-Westinghouse systems in order to increase reliability of I&C systems, including enhanced replacement components, repair and refurbishment services. Recently, WPB has supported numerous customers in obsolescence and Reverse Engineering (RE) services.

While nuclear power plants are some of the most highly regulated and safe worksites in the world, inspection challenges remain. According to estimates by industry experts, the over 400 reactors located across the globe are, on average, 30 years old, and getting older. Extending the nuclear fleet’s lifetime to 60 years or longer has become an imperative in many countries, with engineers and scientists looking for new methods and solutions to predict and maintain the structural integrity and reliability of on-site infrastructure. An unprecedented labor shortage, retiring inspection specialists, and legacy work methodologies are exacerbating the issues in conducting safety inspections efficiently, accurately, and cost-effectively.

Computer-Guided Work

When it comes to computer-guided navigation, we look to our GPS app for seamless guidance. It provides granular, step-by-step directions while it tracks our position and progress towards our destination. It superimposes relevant information such as the location of restaurants and the lowest price gas stations on route. One of these days, it will even read us the menu of a selected restaurant on our path while placing an order as we drive towards it.

Managing plant source term for refueling outage cleanup and full power service can be controlled with the aid of specially macroporous resins. These ion exchange resins are often a cost-effective media for containing impurities in nuclear coolant, minimizing the release of contaminants and ionic leakage, all while encountering impact from oxidative chemistry and radiation. Macroporous resins continue to meet increased expectations in the industry and are considered among the best-accepted practices for nuclear plant source term minimization in standalone and layered polishing vessels.

The process of making fuel for our light-water nuclear plants is meticulously developed and executed. And as anyone who has gone through the receipt process once it arrives at the plant can attest, the initial quality examination is likewise a thorough and rigorous activity. We do a great job of making sure that high quality fuel is ready to go into the core.

Dominion Engineering, Inc. (DEI) has developed a number of innovative and cost effective tools and services designed to improve fuel reliability and spent fuel cask loading operations. This includes BNDE^TM fuel cleaning, which effectively removes debris from all reload fuel bundles without significantly impacting outage schedule. Smart-Sip^TM fuel sipping, a related activity, provides much higher fidelity leak detection capability than traditional vacuum canister sipping equipment, ensuring tight leaks are reliably identified and dispositioned during refueling outages and prior to spent fuel cask loading operations. Related industry experience is discussed further below.

Decades of fuel performance data coupled with advanced analytics and multi-processor computing have enabled the development of ‘novel’ modeling & simulation tools that allow nuclear fuel engineers to predict behavior across the entire fuel cycle. With this new capability nuclear fuel designers and fuel reload managers are better equipped to predict performance and reliability. These tools are fundamental to communicating highfidelity safety margin assessments with the regulator, and, when applied in the early stage of reactor design, can achieve optimum safety system functionality. At the apex of the fuel performance codes development pyramid sit a triad of codes: SI’s Pegasus, DOE’s Bison, and CEA’s Alcyone, which share the commonality of three-dimensional modeling and simulation of nuclear fuel performance. Unique among the capabilities represented by these codes is the ability to bridge the encoded-technology gap between the frontend and the backend of the fuel cycle to eliminate sources of uncertainties in spent fuel safety evaluations. This capability is a distinguishing feature of the Pegasus code.

Contrary to what some believe, the nuclear industry, far from fading into the past, is experiencing an ongoing evolution. New generations of nuclear power technologies move closer to reality, while traditional nuclear generators are reaching retirement and entering decommissioning. As research on Small Modular Reactors (SMR) advances, prototype production is in full swing with the potential for SMRs to eventually replace the current fleet. And while technology advances, so do markets seeking to deal with the challenge of climate change in the face of the retirement of the currently operating nuclear power plants in the U.S. In an exceptional recent win for nuclear power, the Illinois legislature approved $700 million in subsidies for the Byron and Dresden nuclear stations over the next five years. It remains to be seen if this will be an isolated move in today’s nuclear plant lifecycle.

Work itself can be digitalized

Almost every aspect of work within a nuclear plant can be digitalized—from your frontline maintenance to back-end support functions. Digitalized work improves productivity, efficiency, and safety while substantially reducing costs.

From a work performance perspective, an organization can be defined as a collection of processes, often governed by regulatory policies. These processes are implemented using paper-centric procedures, work instructions, forms and checklists, often touching many hands during preparation, performance, and record management. This perspective applies to both direct powerplant operations and maintenance as well as administrative and support functions.

BlackStarTech^® Innovation Group asked one simple question:

How do we further improve the response times of our FLEX strategies?

That question led to a second question:

Can we add defense in depth to U.S. FLEX response, enhance safety margins, and strategically provide critical power rapidly and reliably in under 30 minutes for up to 30 days?

The response and resultant innovative journey led to the development of a rapidly deployable and portable battery-powered energy delivery system transforming how the nuclear industry can provide critical DC and AC power to the most essential components and control systems. The BlackStarTech methodology utilizes compact and portable power supplies to further enhance essential equipment availability, as well as providing defense in depth to FLEX and B.5.b response. The portable battery power technology provides an alternative means of electrical power delivery solutions, expanding operator flexibility and optimizing station risk reduction strategies.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a long record of advancing fusion and fission science and technology. Today, the lab is focused more than ever on taking advantage of that spectrum of nuclear experience to accelerate a viable path to fusion energy and to speed efficient deployment of advanced nuclear technologies to today’s power plants and future fission systems.

As the U.S. nuclear industry moves into plant life extension and subsequent license renewals, the modernization of safety instrumentation and control (I&C) systems holds significant potential to transform plant operations. Automated system diagnostics, equipment health monitoring, and performance indications reduce the need for manual surveillance activities and enable condition-based maintenance, resulting in improved system reliability and reduced maintenance costs. Despite these benefits, adoption of digital I&C systems for safety-related applications across the domestic nuclear fleet has been slow. U.S. nuclear power plants that do choose to embrace the transition from analog to digital are in good company; international plants have successfully implemented digital safety systems for more than a decade. Furthermore, digital safety systems are also the first choice of the growing small modular reactor (SMR) and advanced reactor (AR) communities.

Do you have TRU waste with characteristics and/or prohibited items not acceptable in their current configuration for transportation and/or disposal at WIPP? Such as liquids, oxidizers, corrosives, reactive materials, flammable liquids, and aerosol cans? Are you sorting and segregating the non-compliant waste forms and then developing process/treatment approaches (i.e., solidification, grouting, deactivation, etc.) to ensure your final waste form will meet transportation and WIPP’s acceptance requirements?

Nuclear power plant containment vessels have large, inaccessible regions that cannot be inspected by conventional techniques. Inaccessible regions often are encased in concrete, soil or sand, or hidden behind equipment attached to a wall. Similar constraints affect the inspection of double-shell tanks designed to store nuclear waste, illustrated in Figure 1, that have an inaccessible region at the tank bottom where the primary shell is supported by the secondary shell. Present methods to monitor the integrity of these vessels primarily rely on partial inspections of accessible areas or estimation of corrosion rates; however, these approaches cannot account for nonuniform localized corrosion or cracking.

RadICS-based RPS-ESFAS system

Commercial nuclear power plants in the United States (U.S.) face tough competition from sources of alternative generation (e.g., solar, wind, etc.), cheap natural gas, especially in the unregulated market. It is recognized that 35 percent of the U.S. nuclear power plants, representing 22 percent of U.S. nuclear capacity, are at risk of early closure due to economic factors. Plant operators have been reluctant to adopt modern digital technologies for safety-related systems even though these technologies offer many benefits to improve safety and reliability, as well as achieve operating cost reductions.

By Paul Rochus , MarShield

Lead lined cabinets are utilized across a wide variety of industries including hospitals, nuclear medicine and the nuclear power industry. Some of the applications of shielded cabinets are for storing radioisotopes, radioactive waste, and providing shielding while operating x-ray tubes and protecting sensitive electronic devices from external radiation damage.

by Mike Little and Dale Vines, Dominion Engineering, Inc.

Now how did that get there?

Finding foreign material in your reactor system is not the beginning of a good day. Where did it come from? Did someone leave this in here or did something break? When did this happen? These are all good questions for which we need to know the answers.

By Rob Weber, Projects and Proposals Manager, Central Research Laboratories

Addressing Current Problems

Bag-out operations can pose many issues to the TRU waste handling and disposal process. Among these are operator and facility safety, operational time, excess waste volume, and increased shipping costs to a waste repository.

Historically, removing hazardous waste from gloveboxes has involved using bags for primary containment. This bag-out method can prove tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming to ensure it follows all required safeguards to transfer waste without breaching containment. Layers of bags, yards of tape, and multiple filters are all added to the waste stream to transfer hazardous waste safely from the glovebox into a disposal drum.