Page 18 - May-June 2013
Basic HTML Version
Staying
Focused
on Plant
Safety
By Bill Borchardt, U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
Bill Borchardt
Mr. Bill Borchardt is the Executive
Director for Operations at the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Prior
to assuming this
position, he was
the Director of
the Office of New
Reactors, a position
he assumed when
the new office was
created in August
2006. Since joining
the NRC in 1983 he
has served as the
senior site inspector
at both pressurized
and boiling water
reactors, and
has held several
leadership positions
including Director
of the Operating
Reactor Inspection
Program, Director
of the Office of Enforcement, Deputy
Office Director of Nuclear Reactor
Regulation, and Deputy Director of
Nuclear Security and Incident Response.
Prior to joining the NRC in 1983, Bill
was an officer in the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear
Power Program.
An interview by Newal Agnihotri,
Editor of Nuclear Plant Journal at the
Regulatory Information Conference in
Bethesda, Maryland on March 13, 2013.
1.
What is the U.S. NRC’s contribution
to research and development of technology
to detect incipient failure in metals, pipes
and concrete?
The NRC Office of Research has a
number of research programs in the non-
destructive examination area (ultrasound,
etc.). I would put them into two major
categories. One that has to do with the
examination of piping and materials that
can be used to examine the structure of
existing systems, and there’s a number
of research programs in that area. Then
there’s another program looking at what
techniques can be used to help evaluate
the plant’s readiness to go beyond the
current 60-year time period of potential
licensed activity. This is the “extended
life” issue.
So, the first pro-
gram that I talked
about is really look-
ing at day-to-day
operations
under
the current term,
including the re-
newed license - the
40 to 60-year time
period - and what
that is doing is, I
think, maybe more
like confirmatory
research. Because
as you said, PNNL
(Pacific Northwest
National Laborato-
ry, Richland, Wash-
ington) is doing re-
search on different
programs. We have
our own research program just to validate
those kinds of test results.
2.
What are U.S. NRC’s Research
efforts in looking at the possible license
extension from 60 to 80 years?
The second program that I was
referring to is if there is another wave of
interest on the part of the industry to get
a license extension from 60 to 80 years.
Of course, we need to make sure there’s
a technical justification to make that
decision, and so we’re looking at NDE
methodologies to be able to evaluate
things like concrete, some of the passive
systems, components, building structures
to make sure that they in fact could
support additional 20 years of operation.
3.
How does NRC adjust its oversight of
plants which have decided to shut down?
You’re probably referring to
Kewaunee and Crystal River. They shut
down, really, I think, for two different
reasons, although the economics is
probably a common factor. Of course,
Crystal River is shutting down because of
the damage to their containment structure,
and I think they have made the business
decision that it was not worth putting the
money into repairing that containment
structure in order to enable the plant to
meet the safety standards to be able to
restart.
Kewaunee, of course, was operating
and is operating, but the plant owner
Dominion has decided to shut that plant
down for economic reasons. The NRC
doesn’t review the economic basis for
that decision. What we’ll do is when the
plant is shut down for the last time and its
fuel is offloaded from the reactor vessel
for the last time, we’ll transition over time
from the reactor oversight program to our
decommissioning oversight program.
We adjust our activities depending
on the radiological risk that exists at the
site. You could expect that as a plant has
no fuel left in the reactor vessel, it has no
need to have all of the emergency core
cooling systems that would be needed to
operate that. Our inspection program and
oversight would decrease commensurate
with those changes. I’m told we’ll get
to the point where there’s relatively little
inspection on an ongoing basis. As the
fuel gets offloaded then from the spent
fuel pool to dry cask storage, there’s
very little inspection needed. There’s
no intent for either of those plants, to my
understanding, to ever restart them, so
there would be no maintenance of safety
systems or components at the plant, so
you’ll see a significant decrease in NRC
oversight.
We review every plant that goes into
decommissioning. It has to submit a
decommissioning plan which we review
and approve, and that shows whether the
plant is going to go into deconstruction
or safe storage, or how they’re going to
handle that activity. We’ll review it and
that’s a factor in how we move forward
on our regulatory process as well.
18
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