On October 28th, the Structural Integrity (SI) Nuclear Fuel Technology Team achieved a major milestone in completing the first Verification & Validation phase in the development of its nuclear fuel performance and behavior code Pegasus©.
Mike comes to SI following tenures at Westinghouse Electric and Framatome. During his 25 year career in the nuclear industry, Mike has held a variety of leadership roles that spanned operations and business development. Selected accomplishments in the operations realm during that time included building and leading the Westinghouse Balance of Plant Engineering Department that […]
By: Dick Mattson and Minghao Qin A U.S. BWR utility contracted with Structural Integrity (SI) to review their current reinspection guidance documents relative to those contained in the BWRVIP inspection guidelines, the purpose of which was two-fold: Are current reinspection guidelines compliant with industry requirements? Are there components where reinspection intervals could possibly be extended? […]
By: Mark Jaeger and Andrew Crompton Acoustic resonance is a phenomenon in which an acoustic system amplifies sound waves whose frequency matches one of its own natural frequencies of vibration (its resonance frequencies). in everyday life. In the most simple at home example, blowing air over the open end of a bottle. Blow too hard, […]
By: Erica Libra-Sharkey INDUSTRY CHALLENGE From the US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, “The demanding environments of an operating nuclear reactor may impact the ability of a broad range of materials to perform their intended function over extended service periods. Routine surveillance and repair/replacement activities can mitigate the impact of this degradation; however, […]
By: Bill Weitze 100% of thermal stress was treated as nonlinear gradient stress and linear bending stress was about 12% of the moment stress. Structural Integrity’s (SI’s) review of the stress terms used in piping analysis show that pressure stress does create bending stress in components… EPRI Report 3002014121 “Development of Fatigue Usage Life and […]
By: Scott Chesworth, Bob Grizzi, and Dilip Dedhia Optimizing the inspection interval for high-reliability components whose examinations have a significant outage impact. Welds and similar components in nuclear power plants are subject to periodic examination under ASME Code, Section XI. Typically, examinations are performed during every ten-year inspection interval using volumetric examination techniques, or a […]
By: Dave Gerber and Terry Herrmann Environmentally-Assisted Fatigue (EAF) screening is used to systematically identify limiting locations for managing EAF effects on Class 1 reactor coolant pressure boundary components wetted by primary coolant. This article provides an overview of the methods developed and used by Structural Integrity (SI) for Class 1 components having explicit fatigue […]
By: Curt Carney As plants enter their initial or subsequent license renewal period one of the requirements is to show that fatigue (including environmental effects) is adequately managed. For some locations in pressurized water reactors (PWRs), it can be difficult to demonstrate an environmental fatigue usage factor less than the code allowable value of 1.0. […]
By: Wendy Weiss and Terry Totemeier Structural Integrity (SI) personnel visited a power plant construction site to examine four Grade 91 elbows (ASTM A234-WP91 20-inch OD Sch. 60) that were found to contain axially oriented surface indications. The elbows had not yet been installed. The indications were initially noticed during magnetic particle testing (MT) after […]
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