Nuclear Plants- Aging Effects

On Wednesday, January 7, 2009, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) awarded Scandpower’s Houston Office a R&D contract relating to “Incorporating Aging Effects into Probabilistic Safety Assessment”.

This “Phase II” project is directed at the development of a procedure and guidelines for how to account for aging effects of “long-lived” systems, structures and components in plant-specific PSA studies. The contract duration is 12 months. During 2010 a Phase III is planned to include a pilot application.

The contract award is significant in several ways. First, our proposal was selected over those submitted by U.S. national laboratories, and consulting firms in Canada and the U.S. Second, this new job will help establish Scandpower in the forefront within the “Aging PSA Network.” This project is in direct line with work that our team members have been focusing for a very long time (plant life extension, aging management, structural integrity assessments, risk-informed ISI, NPSAG R-Book Project and related projects, etc.).