2011-28891. Aging Management of Stainless Steel Structures and Components in Treated Borated Water

AGENCY:

Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

ACTION:

Draft interim staff guidance; request for public comment.

SUMMARY:

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requests public comment on Draft License Renewal Interim Staff Guidance (LR-ISG), LR-ISG-2011-01, “Aging Management of Stainless Steel Structures and Components in Treated Borated Water.” This LR-ISG revises the guidance in the Standard Review Plan for Review of License Renewal Applications for Nuclear Power Plants (SRP-LR) and Generic Aging Lessons Learned (GALL) Report for the aging management of stainless steel structures and components exposed to treated borated water.

DATES:

Submit comments by December 8, 2011. Comments received after this date will be considered, if it is practical to do so, but the NRC staff is able to ensure consideration only for comments received on or before this date.

ADDRESSES:

Please include Docket ID NRC-2011-0256 in the subject line of your comments. For additional instructions on submitting comments and instructions on accessing documents related to this action, see “Submitting Comments and Accessing Information” in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section of this document. You may submit comments by one of the following methods:

• Federal Rulemaking Web Site: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for documents filed under Docket ID NRC-2011-0256. Address questions about NRC dockets to Carol Gallagher, telephone: [phone]; email: [e-mail].
• Mail comments to: Cindy Bladey, Chief, Rules, Announcements, and Directives Branch (RADB), Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWB-05-B01M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001.
• Fax comments to: RADB at [phone].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Dr. John Wise, Division of License Renewal, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: [phone]; email: [e-mail].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Submitting Comments and Accessing Information

Comments submitted in writing or in electronic form will be posted on the NRC Web site and on the Federal rulemaking Web site, http://www.regulations.gov. Because your comments will not be edited to remove any identifying or contact information, the NRC cautions you against including any information in your submission that you do not want to be publicly disclosed.

The NRC requests that any party soliciting or aggregating comments received from other persons for submission to the NRC inform those persons that the NRC will not edit their comments to remove any identifying or contact information, and therefore, they should not include any information in their comments that they do not want publicly disclosed.

You can access publicly available documents related to this document using the following methods:

• NRC's Public Document Room (PDR): The public may examine and have copied, for a fee, publicly available documents at the NRC's PDR, Room O1-F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852.
• NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS): Publicly available documents created or received at the NRC are available online in the NRC Library at http://www.nrc.gov/​reading-rm/​adams.html. From this page, the public can gain entry into ADAMS, which provides text and image files of the NRC's public documents. If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC's PDR reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by email to [e-mail]. The draft LR-ISG-2011-01 is available electronically under ADAMS Accession Number ML112360626. The GALL Report and SRP-LR are available under ADAMS Accession Nos. ML103490041 and ML103490036, respectively.
• Federal Rulemaking Web Site: Public comments and supporting materials related to this notice can be found at http://www.regulations.gov by searching on Docket ID NRC-2011-0256.
• NRC's Interim Staff Guidance Web Site: The LR-ISG documents are also available online under the “License Renewal” heading at http://www.nrc.gov/​reading-rm/​doc-collections/​#int.

Background

The NRC issues LR-ISGs to communicate insights and lessons learned and to address emergent issues not covered in license renewal guidance documents, such as the GALL Report and SRP-LR. In this way, the NRC staff and stakeholders may use the guidance in an LR-ISG document before it is incorporated into a formal license renewal guidance document revision. The NRC staff issues LR-ISG in accordance with the LR-ISG Process, Revision 2 (ADAMS Accession No. ML100920158), for which a notice of availability was published in the Federal Register on June 22, 2010 (75 FR 35510).

The NRC staff has determined that existing guidance in the SRP-LR and GALL Report may not adequately address aging management of stainless steel structures and components exposed to treated borated water. Specifically, for pressurized water reactors, the guidance inappropriately credits boron as a corrosion inhibitor in place of other aging management activities. As a result, aging effects such as loss of material, cracking, and reduction of heat transfer may not be adequately managed. The staff has proposed to revise the SRP-LR and GALL Report to align the guidance for treated borated water with that for treated (non-borated) water. The revisions include adding the One-Time Inspection Program to verify the effectiveness of the Water Chemistry Program to manage loss of material and cracking of stainless steel structures and components exposed to treated borated water and adding reduction of heat transfer due to fouling as an aging effect requiring management for stainless steel heat exchanger tubes exposed to treated borated water.

Proposed Action

By this action, the NRC is requesting public comments on draft LR-ISG-2011-01. This LR-ISG proposes certain revisions to NRC guidance in the SRP-LR and GALL Report. The NRC staff will make a final determination regarding issuance of the LR-ISG after it considers any public comments received in response to this request.

Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 1st day of November, 2011. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Melanie A. Galloway,

Acting Director, Division of License Renewal, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.