Non-safety piping operability review case study -- Today and tomorrow

During a 1993 Outage at the Perry Nuclear Power Station, a condition report was issued which identified potential intersystem loss of water between the Emergency Closed Cooling Water System and the Nuclear Closed Cooling Water System during a design basis event. The review of this condition report indicated that if a SSE (safe shutdown earthquake) event were to occur during a design basis event components important to plant safety could potentially be adversely affected if non-seismic/non-safety portions of the Nuclear Closed Cooling Water System could not maintain pressure boundary integrity as a result of the seismic loadings. Presented in this paper are steps, criteria, and methodology used to demonstrate the seismic acceptability of the affected portion of the Nuclear Closed Cooling Water System Piping. Also discussed are the potential benefits and applicability of a recently developed EPRI non-safety, non-seismic operability procedure. This discussion includes the potential cost savings which could have arisen from application of this recently developed procedure