American Society of Mechanical Engineers Code Cases and Update Frequency

<RULE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 50</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2018-0291]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3150-AK23</RIN> <SUBJECT>American Society of Mechanical Engineers Code Cases and Update Frequency</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending its regulations to incorporate by reference revisions of three regulatory guides to approve new, revised, and reaffirmed code cases published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This action allows nuclear power plant licensees and applicants for construction permits, operating licenses, combined licenses, standard design certifications, standard design approvals, and manufacturing licenses to use the code cases listed in these regulatory guides as voluntary alternatives to engineering standards for the construction, inservice inspection, and inservice testing of nuclear power plant components. These engineering standards are set forth in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code and American Society of Mechanical Engineers Operation and Maintenance Code, which are currently incorporated by reference into the NRC's regulations. Further, this final rule announces the availability of a related regulatory guide, not incorporated by reference into the NRC's regulations, that lists code cases that the NRC has not approved for use. Finally, this rulemaking provides more flexibility to licensees by expanding the code of record interval from ten years to two consecutive inservice testing and inservice inspection intervals. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on August 16, 2024. The incorporation by reference of certain material listed in this rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of August 16, 2024. The incorporation by reference of certain other material listed in the rule was approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of April 4, 2022, and November 28, 2022. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2018-0291 when contacting the NRC about the availability of information for this action. You may obtain publicly available information related to this action by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal Rulemaking Website:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and search for Docket ID NRC-2018-0291. Address questions about NRC dockets to Dawn Forder; telephone: 301-415-3407; email: <E T="03">Dawn.Forder@nrc.gov.</E> For technical questions, contact the individuals listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document. • <E T="03">NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS):</E> You may obtain publicly available documents online in the ADAMS Public Documents collection at <E T="03">https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html.</E> To begin the search, select “Begin Web-based ADAMS Search.” For problems with ADAMS, please contact the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, at 301-415-4737, or by email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov.</E> For the convenience of the reader, instructions about obtaining materials referenced in this document are provided in the “Availability of Documents” section. • <E T="03">NRC's PDR:</E> The PDR, where you may examine and order copies of publicly available documents, is open by appointment. To make an appointment to visit the PDR, please send an email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov</E> or call 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. eastern time (ET), Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Technical Library:</E> The Technical Library, which is located at Two White Flint North, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, is open by appointment only. Interested parties may make appointments to examine documents by contacting the NRC Technical Library by email at <E T="03">Library.Resource@nrc.gov</E> between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tyler Hammock, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 301-415-1381, email: <E T="03">Tyler.Hammock@nrc.gov;</E> or Bruce Lin, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, telephone: 301-415-2446, <E T="03">Bruce.Lin@nrc.gov.</E> Both are staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Need for the Regulatory Action</HD> This rulemaking incorporates by reference the latest revisions of three regulatory guides (RGs) into the NRC's regulations. The three RGs identify new, revised, and reaffirmed code cases published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) that the NRC has determined are acceptable for use as voluntary alternatives to compliance with certain provisions of the ASME <E T="03">Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code</E> (BPV Code) and the ASME <E T="03">Operation and Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plants, Division 1, OM Code: Section IST</E> (OM Code) currently incorporated by reference into the NRC's regulations. This rulemaking also revises the current NRC requirement for nuclear power plant licensees to update the codes of record for their inservice examination and testing (IST) and inservice inspection (ISI) programs. Currently, licensees are required to update the code of record every 10 years. This rulemaking would revise the requirement so that licensees would update the code of record after completion of an ISI and IST interval, with a maximum of two consecutive ISI and IST intervals before licensees are required to update the code of record. This revision applies to licensees that are implementing the 2017 Edition, or later editions, of the ASME OM Code and the 2017 Edition, or later editions, of the ASME BPV Code, Section XI, as incorporated by reference into § 50.55a of title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR) “Codes and standards” as the codes of record of their IST/ISI programs. This revision to the NRC's regulations implements Commission direction in staff requirements memorandum (SRM) SRM-SECY-21-0029 (dated November 8, 2021) in response to SECY-21-0029, “Rulemaking Plan on Revision of Inservice Testing and Inservice Inspection Program Update Frequencies Required in 10 CFR 50.55a,” dated March 15, 2021. Following completion of this code case rulemaking and the ASME 2021-2022 Code Editions rulemaking, the NRC plans to streamline approval of code cases that do not require conditions and are unlikely to receive significant and adverse public comments by using the direct final rule process. The code cases that either require conditions or are likely to receive significant and adverse comments will be combined with the Code Editions rulemakings, which will continue to follow the traditional proposed rule and comment rulemaking process. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Major Provisions</HD> The NRC is incorporating by reference the following three RGs: RG 1.84, Design, Fabrication, and Materials Code Case Acceptability, ASME Section III, Revision 40; RG 1.147, Inservice Inspection Code Case Acceptability, ASME Section XI, Division 1, Revision 21; and RG 1.192, Operation and Maintenance [OM] Code Case Acceptability, ASME OM Code, Revision 5. This action allows nuclear power plant licensees and applicants for construction permits, operating licenses, combined licenses, standard design certifications, standard design approvals, and manufacturing licenses to use the code cases listed in these revised RGs as voluntary alternatives to ASME engineering standards for the construction, inservice inspections, and inservice testing of nuclear power plant components. The NRC also notes the availability of RG 1.193, “ASME Code Cases Not Approved for Use,” Revision 8, which lists code cases that the NRC has not approved for generic use and would not be incorporated by reference into the NRC's regulations. The NRC is revising the requirements in § 50.55a(f)(4) and (g)(4) to refer to the term “code of record interval” instead of “120-month interval.” This term, as well as others, is defined in new definitions in § 50.55a(y). Under the new rules, licensees may maintain the same code of record in their IST and ISI programs for two consecutive IST or ISI intervals. As a result of public comments on the proposed rule, the NRC made changes in the final rule to allow licensees to take advantage of this new flexibility provided their IST or ISI programs implement the 2017 Edition of the ASME OM Code or ASME BPV Code, Section XI, respectively. Also, as a result of public comments, the NRC revised the final rule to update the language of § 50.55a(f)(4)(iv) and (g)(4)(iv) to allow licensees to use a later edition of ASME OM Code and ASME BPV Code, Section XI, as incorporated by reference into § 50.55a, at the start of a new IST or ISI interval without submitting a request to the NRC for approval. As a result of these changes, licensees have the option to update their codes of record at the end of each ISI or IST interval or after two consecutive ISI or IST intervals. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Costs and Benefits</HD> The NRC prepared a final regulatory analysis to determine the expected quantitative costs and benefits of this final rule, as well as qualitative factors to be considered in the NRC's rulemaking decision. The analysis concluded that this final rule would result in net savings to the industry and the NRC. As shown in table I, the estimated total net benefit relative to the regulatory baseline and the quantitative benefits would outweig ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 140k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━