DOE OSTI2013
The existing regulatory environment for nuclear reactors impacts both the facility design and the cost of operations once the facility is built. Delaying the consideration of regulatory requirements until late in the facility design - or worse, until after construction has begun - can result in costly retrofitting as well as increased operational costs to fulfill safety, security, safeguards, and emergency readiness requirements. Considering the scale and scope, as well as the latest design trends in the next generation of nuclear facilities, there is an opportunity to evaluate the regulatory requirements and optimize the design process for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), as compared to current Light Water Reactors (LWRs). To this end, Sandia has embarked on an initiative to evaluate the interactions of regulations and operations as an approach to optimizing the design of SMR facilities, supporting operational efficiencies, as well as regulatory requirements. The early stages of this initiative consider two focus areas. The first focus area, reported by LaChance, et al. (2007), identifies the regulatory requirements established for the current fleet of LWR facilities regarding Safety, Security, Operations, Safeguards, and Emergency Planning, and evaluates the technical bases for these requirements. The second focus area, developed in this report, documents the foundations for an innovative approach that supports a design framework for SMR facilities that incorporates the regulatory environment, as well as the continued operation of the facility, into the early design stages, eliminating the need for costly retrofitting and additional operating personnel to fulfill regulatory requirements. The work considers a technique known as Integrated Safety, Operations, Security and Safeguards (ISOSS) (Darby, et al., 2007). In coordination with the best practices of industrial operations, the goal of this effort is to develop a design framework that outlines how ISOSS requirements can be incorporated into the pre-conceptual through early facility design stages, seeking a cost-effective design that meets both operational efficiencies and the regulatory environment. The larger scope of the project, i.e., in future stages, includes the identification of potentially conflicting requirements identified by the ISOSS framework, including an analysis of how regulatory requirements may be changed to account for the intrinsic features of SMRs.
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗