The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code [1], Section XI, Non mandatory Appendix E, “Evaluation of Unanticipated Operating Events”, provides a deterministic procedure for evaluating reactor pressure vessel (RPV) integrity following an unanticipated event that exceeds the operational limits defined in plant operating procedures. The recently developed risk-informed procedure for Appendix G to Section XI of the ASME Code [2, 3], and the development by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the alternate Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) rule [4, 5, 6] led to initiation of this study to determine if the Appendix E evaluation criteria are consistent with risk-informed acceptance criteria. The results of the work presented in this paper demonstrate that Appendix E is consistent with risk-informed criteria developed for PTS and Appendix G and ensures that evaluation of RPV integrity following an unanticipated event would not violate material or operational limits recently defined using risk-informed criteria. Currently, Appendix E does not have evaluation criteria for BWR vessels; however, as part of this study, risk-informed analyses were performed for unanticipated heat-up events and isothermal, overpressure events in BWR plant designs.

This content is only available via PDF.
You do not currently have access to this content.