ASCE/SEI Standard 43, “Seismic Design Criteria for Structures, Systems, and Components in Nuclear Facilities,” is a consensus US national standard developed by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It provides design criteria for nuclear structures and should be used in conjunction with ASCE/SEI Standard 4 – “Seismic Analysis of Safety-Related Nuclear Structures”. The two standards are […]
Currently there are nearly 100 commercial nuclear power plants operating in the US with most of the plants commissioned between the mid 1960’s and the mid 1980’s. All plants are designed to be capable of safely withstanding a postulated earthquake, known as the safe shutdown earthquake. Similar requirements are imposed on US Department of Energy […]
In welded structures, fatigue failures typically occur at the welded joints. Stress concentrations and small flaws in the welds are key parameters in determining the fatigue life of weldments. Traditionally, fatigue analysis of welded joints has been performed by attempting to determine the peak stress at the welded joint and then entering an appropriate “S-N curve” to estimate […]
Unloading of spent nuclear fuel at nuclear utilities typically involves removing spent fuel from the spent fuel pool and placing it in casks for interim on-site storage. During unloading, some utilities use what is known as a “stacked cask” configuration in which a transfer cask is temporarily stacked on top of a storage cask as […]
Prompt Early Response by Regulators and Industry – Shortly after the March 11, 2011 magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, and damaged the six nuclear power plants at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi site, the US NRC began to follow the situation. The NRC also established a Task Force to develop lessons learned. The Near-Term Task […]
