ML19308B898
| ML19308B898 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 05/10/1973 |
| From: | Muntzing L US ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION (AEC) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| TASK-TF, TASK-TMR S-7-73, NUDOCS 8001170545 | |
| Download: ML19308B898 (10) | |
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UNITED' STATGS Q
ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION WASHINGTON, D.C.
20545 No.
S-7-73 Tel.
301/973-5371 Remarks by L. Manning Muntzing, Director of Regulation U.S. Atomic Energy Commission To The American Power Conference Chicago, Illinois - May 10,1973 STANDARDIZATION IN NUCLEAR POWER This American Power Conference comes at a time when the ground is shifting uneasily beneath the feet of all who are connected with the provision of energy supp11ec. Old relationships and accustomed ways of doing things are being called daily into question.
Ideas once regarded as axicmatic -- the virtue of economic growth is but one example -- are behg challenged. This is clearly a time for considering and testing i
new ideas and approaches.
Against this background, and in the context of short-term energy shortages, rising conflict between environmentalists and those advocating measures to increase energy supplies, and mounting concern over the j
inplications of our energy situation for the future course of the Nation, the President's second energy message within two years is now being widely evaluated. While the current discussion focuses on the establish-ment of national policies and objectives, it is important to recognize that there is many a slip between the establishment of an objective and l
its achiev3 ment. What we do to implement objectiv.:s can be of critical importance.
In the nuclear part of the energy complex, the present expectations, in-l cluding those reflected in the President's message, are not likely to be achieved without significant changes of concept in the design, construc-tIan and regulation of nuclear power plants and facilities.
Nuclear power today provides four percent of the nation's electric j
generating capacity. This is predicted to increase to 21 percent in 1
1980, to 43 percent in 1990, and to 60 percent by the year 2000.
Translating this into megawatts, the forecasts are for an increase from 16,000 as of today, to 132,000 in 1980, to 500,000 in 1990, and to 1,200,000 at the end of the century. To get a real appreciation of this predicted growth, consider that it involves an increase from 31 plants operable today, to some 150 in 1980, to over 450 in 1990, and to about 1,000 plants in the year 2000.
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i If these forecasts are to be met, there is one tendency in the nuclear industry which must be arrested in the very near future. This is the practice of having wide design variations among individual nuclear power plants.
The nuclear plants now cperable represent a broad range of designs and power levels. Essentially, they are all different -- each one custom designed. Variability is normal and desirable in the early developmental stages of a new industry. It is tolerable when plants are relatively few in number and modest in size, and when there is an absence of demanding goals for quantity production.
This may have been the situation of nuclear power in past years, but it 4
is not the situation now. Light water reactors have emerged from the early developmental stage to the point where they are in wide commercial j
use and are being relied on to carry base loads on an increasing number of the nation's power systems.
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To meet the demands of the future, nuclear power must now give up its youthful propensity towards variability from plant to plant.
In the period ahead, when nuclear plants will be of substantial size and much more numerous, continuation of custom design, requiring customized licensing 4
review, customized construction practices, and customized startup, operating, and maintenance procedures, can only lead to industrial and regulatory chaos. It is our view, in short, that one of the major changes necessary to a high confidence factor in nuclear power's ability to reach the goals projected for it is the adoption of standardization in virtually all aspects of nuclear power plants.
FIRST STEPS TOWARDS STANDARDIZATION "the nuclear industry has been aware of the mounting pressures on it and over the past few years architect-engineers have been working toward and vendors have been marketing some relatively standard designs. This limited standardization effort has been evolving in helter-skelter fashion, however, without any systematic planning or direction.
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has been held back by the persistence and strength of trends toward continued changes in technology, resulting in the identification of new safety issues and the imposition of new licensing requirements.
With this background in mind, the AEC last year decided to grasp the Icadership reins, which had been dangling somewhere between government i
and industry, each deferring to the other, and to try to enlist all the elements of the industry in a determined drive towards effective 4
standardization.
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The first step in this drive was the issuance almost exactly one year ago of a policy pronouncement by the Commission strongly endorsing the concept of standardization in these words:
"It is the policy of the Atomic Energy Commission to encourage, support, and give priority con-sideration to activities leading to greater standardization of nuclear power plants in terms of their design, fabrication, construction, testing, and operation."
The AEC then held a series of meetings with nuclear vendors, utilities, professional societies, trade associations, other Federal agencies, and environmental groups to discuss specific ways in which the Commission's announced policy could best be implemented.
Following these meetings, in March of this year, a further Commission announcement set forth three procedural options which the AEC is prepared to implement now to bring about greater standardization.
AEC'S STANDARDIZATION OPTIONS The first approach involves what are called " Reference Systems." Under this concept, the design of an entire facility, or major portions thereof, can be reviewed as a standardized design provided there is an intent to use it in a number of future applications. The review can be performed either within or outside the context of an individual plant application. The largest use of this approach is likely to be by manu-facturers of nuclear steam supply systems and by architect-engineers.
The second option is the " Duplicate Plant" approach. It provides for a single review of the facility design when a utility or a group of utilities plans to construct several identical plants at one or more sites during a limited period of time.
Individual site characteristics will still be considered in separate construction permit proceedings, and the design of the duplicate plants will have to meet the most restrictive of the site conditions identified.
The final option offe_ed involves a new kind of nuclear power plant license, namely, a " License to Manufacture".
Such licenses will be considered in cases where a number of complete facilities are to be built at a central location and then moved to the utility sites where they will be operated. This procedure will, for example, be applicable in the case of barge-mounted plants which have been proposed for off-shore locations. Under proposed rules published for comment last month, an application for a license to manufacture will undergo review by AEC's Regulatory Staf f and the independent Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and will be the subject of a public hearing. Once a license l
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' to manufacture has been issued, construction permit reviews for indi-1 vidual plants will focus on site-related matters. Separate operating permits will still have to be obtained for each unit produced under a license to manufacture.
The AEC's standardization statement made clear that, while manpower ibnitations have made it necessary to restrict staff efforts to just these three options at this time, modifications and expansion of the options may be offered in the future, and the nuclear industry and the public were asked to comment on possible modifications or expansions.
1 The statement included several additional provisions. Probably most important among these was the establishment of a capacity limit of 3800
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megawatts thermal, approximately 1300 megawatts electrical, on all light water reactors. This limit of 3800 thermal megawatts is to be
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applied to the output of the reactor core, that is, to the licensed power level of the facility. For reactor cores at the 3800 limit, analyses and evaluations of important features of the facility should be carried out at an assumed core power level of 4100 thermal megawatts.
The capacity limits apply whether the design is submitted for standard-ized or custom review. Plant power levels have been mounting steadily in recent years. Each increase has resulted in design modifications and in an increment in the staff time required for review in order to maintain a consistent level of safety. It is the AEC's view that, until there has been an opportunity to achieve effective standardization with plants of the capacities now being built and ordered, there should be a limit on further increases.
The March statement also stipulated that, for the present, light-water reactors are the only type that will be given a standardized review.
In addition, for the present, applications for standardized review will be accepted only for the entire facility, the nuclear steam supply system, the containment, or the nuclear steam supply system in conjunction with l
the iontainment. Whether applications covering other major parts of the facility will be accepted at a later date will depend on the availability of specialized manpower and on the relative importance of the systems j
to plant safety.
l Finally, the scatement made clear that while custom plants will continue to be reviewed, standardized plants will receive a priority in scheduling.
We recognize the importance of providing adequate incentives in order to get standardization under way. Accordingly, we have established an objective to handle standardized reviews in essentially the same time frame as that provided for custom plants. Currently, review times for A
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. construction permits amount to 14 to 16 months. Although reviews of standardized plants, at least in the early rounds,,may well require more manpower than reviews of custom plants, we intend to give them suf ficient attention to assure that use of the standardization approach is not deterred by scheduling considerations.
EXPECTED BENEFITS OF STANDARDIZATION Enhanced Safety The most important advantage which the AEC foresees for standErdization is the extra edge of assurance it will provide that nuclear plants can be operated safely. This will come in part from the additional investment of Regulatory staff effort that can be made in safety reviews of designs that are replicated many times.
Further, there will be opportunity to apply the lessons of experience in construction, start-up, operation, and inspection of many plants of i
a given type in order to enhance the safety of each one.
Familiarity through repeated expe-lence will enable utilities, manufacturers, designers, and AEC regulators alike to focus in a more uniform and efficient way on the most important safety issues.
Shortened Lead Times Standardization should have an important effect in shortening the lead time from plant selection to commercial operation for nuclear plants.
At this time, the selection-licensing-construction cycle for nuclear plants requires nine to ten years, divided roughly as follows:
two years for design selection, preapplication site reviews and prepara-tion of the application; two years for construction permit reviews, in-cluding public hearings; and five to six years for construction and possible operating license hearings after the construction permit is iss ued.
Standardization alone should make possible a reduction of about two years in this cycle. About a year should be cut from the time re-quired for the selection of an approved standard design and the pre-paration of the construction permit application.
In addition, as the industry begins to replicate standardized plants, it should be possible to reduce the required construction time by at_least a year.' The saving will come largely from elimination of the trial and error sequences - the so-called "put it in - tear it out" syndrome - which characterizes the construction of many custom plants.
- There are alluring opportunities for cutting the nuclear lead time cycle further by coupling standardization with new concepts for power plant siting. Although there is a strong potential for delay once a power plant is built because of the possibility of an operating license hearing, the significant opportunity for reducing the time interval from concept to operation occurs at the beginning of the process. As noted earlier, a total of four years may be taken up in choosing a site, selecting designs and manufacturers, preparing a construction permit application, and reviewing that application before construction can begin.
An alternative to the present system would be the use of designated sites selected in advance of their use.
A bank of approved sites can be established once certain tools are available, such as siting criteria on such subjects as seismicity, population distribution, routine releases, and environmental characteristics. The parameters of plants, either standardized or hypothesized, can be developed so that the maximum environmental impacts of the facilities can be projected for the site.
The only site-related question which would then need to be addressed later in considering construction permits for specific plants would be whether each individual plant's projected performance fell within the assumptions used in evaluating the site. Should a utility elect to install a plant of preapproved standardized design at such a pre-approved designated site, there would appear to be no reason, from either the safety or environmental point of view, why site work should not be initiated with the filing of the construction permit application.
In this way approximately two years now occupied in construction permit preparation and reviews could probably be eliminated. Adding these two years to the two saved by standardization leads to the prospect of an aggregate reduction of the nuclear lead time from the current nine to ten years to a new total of about five to six years.
Reduced Costs For the nuclear industry, standardization should also lead to reductions in costs at several stages of a power plant's history.
Obviously, design costs per plant will be lessened if major features of design are repeated from plant to plant. Also, the industry can look forward to some economies of scale when multiple quantities of various components and systems are manufactured.
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Shortened lead times will produce additional savings. The period over which interest would be paid on a non-producing investment would be lessened.
The need to provide high cost, make-shift power supply arrange-ments to compensate for schedule delays would be obviated. A shortened schedule would also reduce the project's exposure to inflation.
Other cost savings may be available through the sharing of spare parts by utilities using the same standardized designs, through the use in start-up procedures of crews trained for this single purpose, and through a reduction in field' fixing *of items fabricated for power plants and found at the site to be unsuitable.
POTENTIAL DISADVANTAGES OF STANDARDIZATION Several potential disadvantages of standardization have been mentioned in the comments we have received. Having considered these with some earnestness, we feel that the alleged consequences will eitner not materialize or that it will be possible to compensate for them.
Concern has been expressed that standardization will stifle innovation.,
We foresee the opposite.
Under custom review procedures a utility may-tend to select designs similar to those approved for other plants,.
bearing in mind the regulatory uncertainties involved in trying new models. Under standardization procedures novel design features could be presented to prospective customers with regulatory approval already in hand.
Thesamereasoningmayapplytoanotherexpressedconcern,namely,that$
standardization may make it difficult for new companies to enter _the nuclear field. A new seller offering a preapproved design should have less dif ficulty than at present in persuading customers that his offering is acceptable, at least from the regulatory point of view.
A problem which gives us serious concern is that there may be less' need under standardization procedures fer utility staffs and technical managements to be intimately involved in detailed technical review of..,
plant designs at the construction permit stage. Because it is the.
utility that must operate the plant safely, a high level of technical competence on the part of the utility is required before an operating license can be granted. Accordingly, the AEC will need to scrutinize closely the staffing of utility applicants, particularly those without,3 previous experience in the nuclear field.
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MOVEMENT TOWAP') STANDARDIZATION I
While the Commission's announcement of the standardized review options
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is scarcely two months old, some movement in furtherance of standardiza-tion is already apparent.
Each of the four major light water reactor vendors has conferred with the AEC staff on the standardization options and on how they may individ-ually implement them. Two vendors have already submitted requests for a standardized review. We expect the submission of standardized proposals by the other vendors in the near future.
Representatives of the SNUPPS (Standard Nuclear Utility Power Plant Systems) group of Midwest utilities have also conferred with the staff on a proposal they may soon make, probably utilizing features of the
" duplicate plants" option.
4 The AEC is continuing its strong efforts, in concert with the American National Standards Institute and its cooperating organizations and j
committees, to promote the writing, approval'and implementation of a i
comprehensive body of engineering standards for nuclear power plants.
We regard such codification of good engineering practice as an indispen-sable part of effective standardization. Standardization cannot work unless the part or process being standardized is known from experience to be good and to be reproducible. Written standards such as are now being developed through the ANSI system represent an embodiment of industrial experience and provide the assurance needed for moving forward with standardization.
The American Nuclear Society has taken organizational steps and begun development of standards to support standardization of the design i
details of various systems. This involves defining the boundaries and interfaces of the systems as well as their components. Complementing j
this ef fort, the AEC has under development a series of Regulatory Guides that will identify standardized design, testing and maintenance criteria i
for specific systems and subsystems important to the safety of nuclear power plants.
The AEC is also taking steps to make its regulatory processes more compatible with standardization.
Specific guidance has been developed for industry by our documents on the content and format of both safety analysis and environmental reports. In addition, procedures have been instituted or are being developed to eliminate arbitrary, unpredictable changes in licensing requirements. Among these are the following:
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Standard review plans are being developed which -ill enable us to monitor the scope and consistency of license reviews.
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A topical report review program has been developed which will be used to provide generic reviews of significant safety matters.
The results of these reviews will then be applied to individual licensing cases to assure consistency and prevent duplication of effort.
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The staf f is engaged in standardizing the technical specifica-tions incorporated in operating licenses to insure safe operation. The elimination of needless variation from reactor to reactor in these technical specifications will be of great assistance both to the utilities and to the Regulatory staff, particularly to the field staff which monitors the licensee's compliance with license conditions.
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Last and perhaps most important, we are developing a review process which will assure that completed items of a standardized review are not re-reviewed or subsequent applications.
Based on the present pace of all the efforts toward standardization, we can hazard the prediction that in 1974 we should complete the first round of the standardized design reviews. As other rounds are, finished, an inventory of approved standardized designs will develop and thereby make standardization a reality.
CONCLUSION We do not offer standardization as a panacea for all the problems affecting nuclear power. We do, however, regard it as an indispensable step if nuclear power is to be a major contributor to the nation's energy supplies in the years ahead.
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