Evaluation of a permanent reactor vessel head shield

This paper reports that Virginia Power recently completed installing permanent reactor vessel head shields at all four of its nuclear units-Surry 1 and 2 (781-MWe Westinghouse PWRs) and North Anna 1 and 2 (893-MWe Westinghouse PWRs). Permanent shields were chosen over the use of temporary shielding based on a cost/benefit analysis. Factors that were taken into account in the analysis included the cost of the shields, the one-time dose commitment for installation of permanent shields, dose and manpower commitments for installation and removal of temporary shielding during each outage, decontamination and storage of temporary shielding between outages, and projected dose savings for both types of shields. Basically, permanent shields were found to be more cot-effective because each required only a one-time dose commitment for installation