Structural Integrity Associates (SIA) has supported reactor system and fuel design for decades, and that experience now underpins advanced reactor programs at every stage of development — design, analysis, licensing, construction, and operation. Developers of small modular, microreactor, and non-light-water designs face material and structural problems with little operating precedent: elevated temperatures, novel coolants, extended fuel residence times, and regulatory pathways still taking shape. SIA brings the same engineering depth that has served the operating nuclear power fleet to the next generation of plants.
Design optimization covers buildings and support structures, material selection, processing, and testing, digital twin development, and design-for-analysis strategies that reduce conservatism before it is locked into a licensing basis. Seismic methodology and structural evaluation include seismic performance criteria, seismic risk assessment and PRA, soil-structure interaction using SASSI, equipment qualification by testing or analysis, and aircraft impact, tornado missile, and large component drop evaluations. Design analyses span ASME Section III including Division 5, piping and thermal hydraulic analysis with CFD, embrittlement and aging effects, and constitutive material modeling for irradiation hardening, creep, void swelling, creep-fatigue, and environmentally assisted stress corrosion cracking — work grounded in SIA’s advanced engineering practice.
Licensing support runs from analytical and inspection program development through PSAR/FSAR advisement, regulatory interactions, health physics and dose evaluation, emergency plan and EAL development, and pre-operational environmental monitoring and meteorology. Risk assessment adds target reliability evaluation, deterministic and probabilistic flaw tolerance analysis, leak-before-break evaluations, and flaw acceptance standards credited against MANDE strategies, supported by quality assurance program development and NQA-1 commercial grade dedication. Nuclear fuel technology capabilities include fuel performance codes and independent validation, accident and transient analyses, neutronics, source term and consequence analysis, and spent fuel storage design.
Engineering programs address ASME OM 3/7 piping, Section III fatigue management, and Section XI Division 2 reliability and integrity management, including degradation mechanism assessment and NDE procedure qualification and execution. Conventional island scope covers turbine and generator performance, process steam and chemistry evaluations, cathodic protection, and full-service engineering and electrical and instrumentation construction, while operational support services deliver process and temperature control skids, radioactive waste treatment, occupational dose assessment, and radiological engineering and protection. SIA’s asset performance management platform consolidates the resulting data into a single source of truth. Contact SIA to partner on next-generation nuclear technologies.