Update to Risk-Informed Pressurized Water Reactor Vessel 10 to 20 Year Inspection Interval Extension

The Pressurized Water Reactor Owners Group (formerly the Westinghouse Owners Group (WOG)) methodology for extending the inservice inspection interval for welds in pressurized water reactor (PWR) reactor pressure vessel (RPV) was introduced as ICONE12-49429. The paper presented a risk informed basis for extending the interval between inspections from the current interval of 10 years to 20 years. In the paper presented at ICONE-12, results of pilot studies on typical Westinghouse and Combustion Engineering Nuclear Steam Supply System (NSSS) designs of PWR vessels showed that the change in risk associated with the proposed inspection interval extension was within the guidelines specified in the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Regulatory Guide 1.174 for an acceptably small change in risk. Since the methodology was originally presented, the evaluation has been updated to incorporate the latest changes in the NRC Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) Risk Reevaluation Program and expanded to include the Babcock and Wilcox NSSS RPV design. The results of these evaluations demonstrate that the proposed RPV inspection interval extension remains a viable option for the industry. The updates to the methodology and input, pilot plant evaluations, results, process for demonstrating applicability of the pilot plant analysis to non-pilot lead plants and lessons learned from the evaluations performed are summarized in this paper.