American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2021-2022 Code Editions

<RULE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 50</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2018-0289]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3150-AK21</RIN> <SUBJECT>American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2021-2022 Code Editions</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 the 2021 Edition of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code and the 2022 Edition of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Operation and Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plants, Division 1, OM Code: Section IST, for nuclear power plants. This action is in accordance with the NRC's policy to periodically update the regulations to incorporate by reference new editions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Codes and is intended to maintain the safety of nuclear power plants and to make NRC activities more effective and efficient. This amendment also incorporates editorial changes that do not change the technical information. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on September 30, 2024. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in the regulation is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of September 30, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2018-0289 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-2018-0289. Address questions about NRC dockets to Helen Chang; telephone: 301-415-3228; email: <E T="03">Helen.Chang@nrc.gov.</E> For technical questions, contact the individual 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, 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. 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. eastern time, 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 Michael Benson, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, telephone: 301-415-2425, email: <E T="03">Michael.Benson@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> The NRC is amending its regulations to incorporate by reference the 2021 Edition of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) <E T="03">Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code</E> (BPV Code) and the 2022 Edition of the ASME <E T="03">Operation and Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plants,</E> Division 1, OM Code: Section IST (OM Code), for nuclear power plants. The ASME periodically revises and updates its Codes for nuclear power plants by issuing new editions; this final rule is in accordance with the NRC's practice to incorporate those new editions into the NRC's regulations. This rule maintains the safety of nuclear power plants, makes NRC activities more effective and efficient, and allows nuclear power plant licensees and applicants to take advantage of the latest ASME BPV and OM Codes (ASME Codes). The ASME is a voluntary consensus standards organization, and the ASME Codes are voluntary consensus standards. The NRC's use of the ASME Codes is consistent with applicable requirements of the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA). See also Section XIV of this document, “Voluntary Consensus Standards.” <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Major Provisions</HD> Major provisions of this final rule include the incorporation by reference with conditions of the following ASME Codes into NRC regulations and delineation of NRC requirements for the use of these Codes: <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• The 2021 Edition of the BPV Code</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• The 2022 Edition of the OM Code</FP> <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Costs and Benefits</HD> The NRC prepared a regulatory analysis to determine the expected costs and benefits of this final rule. The regulatory analysis identifies costs and benefits in both a quantitative fashion as well as in a qualitative fashion. Based on the analysis, the NRC concludes that this final rule results in a net quantitative averted cost to the industry and a net cost to the NRC. This final rule, relative to the regulatory baseline, results in a net averted cost for industry of $0.65 million based on a 7-percent net present value (NPV) and $0.72 million based on a 3-percent NPV. This final rule, relative to the regulatory baseline, results in a net cost to the NRC of $44 thousand based on a 7-percent NPV to $10 thousand based on a 3-percent NPV. Qualitative factors that were considered include regulatory stability and predictability, regulatory efficiency, and consistency with the NTTAA. The regulatory analysis shows that the rulemaking is justified because the total quantified benefits of the regulatory action exceed the costs of the action. When the qualitative benefits (including the safety benefit and improvement in knowledge) are considered together with the quantified benefits, the benefits outweigh the identified quantitative and qualitative costs. The NRC has had a decades-long practice of approving and/or mandating the use of certain parts of editions and addenda of these ASME Codes in § 50.55a. Continuing this practice in this final rule ensures regulatory stability and predictability. This practice also provides consistency across the industry and provides assurance to the industry and the public that the NRC will continue to support the use of the most updated and technically sound techniques developed by the ASME to provide adequate protection to the public. In this regard, the ASME Codes are voluntary consensus standards developed by technical committees composed of mechanical engineers and others who represent the broad and varied interests of their industries, from manufacturers and installers to insurers, inspectors, distributors, regulatory agencies, and end users. The standards undergo extensive external review before the NRC considers whether to incorporate them by reference. Finally, the NRC's use of the ASME Codes is consistent with the NTTAA, which directs Federal agencies to adopt voluntary consensus standards instead of developing “government-unique” ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Federal agency-developed) standards, unless inconsistent with applicable law or otherwise impractical. For more information, please see the final regulatory analysis (ML24053A051) in the NRC's ADAMS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents </HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Discussion</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. ASME BPV Code, Section III</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. ASME BPV Code, Section XI</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. ASME OM Code</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Editorial Correction</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Opportunities for Public Participation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Public Comment Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Section-by-Section Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Generic Aging Lessons Learned Report</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Regulatory Flexibility Certification</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Regulatory Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IX. Backfitting and Issue Finality</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">X. Plain Writing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XI. Environmental Assessment and Final Finding of No Significant Environmental Impact</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XII. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XIII. Congressional Review Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XIV. Voluntary Consensus Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XV. Incorporation by Reference—Reasonable Availability to Interested Parties</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XVI. Availability of Guidance</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XVII. Availability of Documents</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The ASME develops and publishes the ASME BPV Code, which contains requirements for the design, construction, and inservice inspection (ISI) of nuclear power plant components, and the ASME OM Code, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> which contains requirements for inservice testing (IST) of nuclear power plant components. Until 2012, the ASME issue ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 152k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━