LBB considerations for a new plant design

The leak-before-break (LBB) methodology is accepted as a technically justifiable approach for eliminating postulation of Double-Ended Guillotine Breaks (DEGB) in high energy piping systems. This is the result of extensive research, development, and rigorous evaluations by the NRC and the commercial nuclear power industry since the early 1970s. The DEGB postulation is responsible for the many hundreds of pipe whip restraints and jet shields found in commercial nuclear plants. These restraints and jet shields not only cost many millions of dollars, but also cause plant congestion leading to reduced reliability in inservice inspection and increased man-rem exposure. While use of leak-before-break technology saved hundreds of millions of dollars in backfit costs to many operating Westinghouse plants, value-impacts resulting from the application of this technology for future plants are greater on a per plant basis. These benefits will be highlighted in this paper. The LBB technology has been applied extensively to high energy piping systems in operating plants. However, there are differences between the application of LBB technology to an operating plant and to a new plant design. In this paper an approach is proposed which is suitable for application of LBB to a new plant design such as the Westinghouse AP600. The approach is based on generating Bounding Analyses Curves (BAC) for the candidate piping systems. The general methodology and criteria used for developing the BACs are based on modified GDC-4 and Standard Review Plan (SRP) 3.6.3. The BAC allows advance evaluation of the piping system from the LBB standpoint thereby assuring LBB conformance for the piping system. The piping designer can use the results of the BACs to determine acceptability of design loads and make modifications (in terms of piping layout and support configurations) as necessary at the design stage to assure LBB for the, piping systems under consideration