Radiation control to improve nuclear power plant availability

Inspection, repair, and replacement of nuclear plant components are performed in environments where radiation fields are ever-present. These activities are likely to expand as the industry moves to provide technical justification for extending plant life. Reducing radiation fields will permit these activities to be performed more efficiently. Thus, outage time will be shortened, which would increase plant availability. This paper highlights the research being supported by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to reduce radiation fields in nuclear power plants. The four main aims of this work are to (1) reduce the inventory of cobalt in the plant, (2) control primary coolant chemistry so that the formation of the cobalt-60 isotope is impeded, (3) use decontamination technology to remove deposited films, and (4) develop passivation/preconditioning methods to reduce coblat-60 pickup and corrosion rates of plant materials. This paper briefly identifies the phenomena involved, the currently available technology, and the scope of ongoing research