Approval of American Society of Mechanical Engineers Unconditioned Code Cases

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 50</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2024-0163]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3150-AL20</RIN> <SUBJECT>Approval of American Society of Mechanical Engineers Unconditioned Code Cases</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing to amend its regulations to incorporate by reference a regulatory guide that approves unconditioned code cases published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). This action would allow nuclear power plant applicants and licensees to use the code cases as voluntary alternatives to engineering standards for nuclear power plant components. These standards are set forth in the ASME <E T="03">Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code</E> and ASME <E T="03">Operation and Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plants,</E> which are currently incorporated by reference into the NRC's regulations. The NRC is requesting comments on this proposed rule. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments on the proposed rule by November 25, 2025. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the NRC is able to ensure consideration only for comments received on or before this date. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID NRC-2024-0163, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> If your material cannot be submitted using <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> call or email the individuals listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document for alternative instructions. You can read a plain language description of this proposed rule at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2024-0163.</E> For additional direction on obtaining information and submitting comments, see “Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments” in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nicole Fields, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 630-829-9570, email: <E T="03">Nicole.Fields@nrc.gov;</E> or Jay Collins, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, telephone: 301-415-4038, email: <E T="03">Jay.Collins@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">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Rulemaking Procedure</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Plain Writing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Regulatory Planning and Review (Executive Order 12866)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Availability of Documents</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Obtaining Information</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2024-0163 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-2024-0163. • <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 ADAMS Public 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. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Submitting Comments</HD> The NRC encourages electronic comment submission through the Federal rulemaking website ( <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> ). Please include Docket ID NRC-2024-0163 in your comment submission. The NRC cautions you not to include identifying or contact information that you do not want to be publicly disclosed in your comment submission. The NRC will post all comment submissions at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> as well as enter the comment submissions into ADAMS. The NRC does not routinely edit comment submissions to remove identifying or contact information. If you are requesting or aggregating comments from other persons for submission to the NRC, then you should inform those persons not to include identifying or contact information that they do not want to be publicly disclosed in their comment submission. Your request should state that the NRC does not routinely edit comment submissions to remove such information before making the comment submissions available to the public or entering the comment into ADAMS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Rulemaking Procedure</HD> Because the NRC considers this action to be noncontroversial, the NRC is publishing this proposed rule concurrently with a direct final rule in the Rules and Regulations section of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The direct final rule will become effective on January 26, 2026 However, if the NRC receives significant adverse comments by November 25, 2025, then the NRC will publish a document that withdraws the direct final rule. If the direct final rule is withdrawn, the NRC will address the comments in a subsequent final rule or as otherwise appropriate. A significant adverse comment is a comment where the commenter explains why the rule would be inappropriate, including challenges to the rule's underlying premise or approach, or would be ineffective or unacceptable without a change. A comment is adverse and significant if: (1) The comment opposes the rule and provides a reason sufficient to require a substantive response in a notice-and-comment process. For example, a substantive response is required when: (a) The comment causes the NRC to reevaluate (or reconsider) its position or conduct additional analysis; (b) The comment raises an issue serious enough to warrant a substantive response to clarify or complete the record; or (c) The comment raises a relevant issue that was not previously addressed or considered by the NRC. (2) The comment proposes a change or an addition to the rule, and it is apparent that the rule would be ineffective or unacceptable without incorporation of the change or addition. (3) The comment causes the NRC to make a change (other than editorial) to the rule. For a more detailed discussion of the proposed rule changes and associated analyses, see the direct final rule published in the Rules and Regulations section of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) develops and publishes the ASME <E T="03">Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code</E> (BPV Code), which contains requirements for the design, construction, and inservice inspection (ISI) of nuclear power plant components, and the ASME <E T="03">Operation and Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plants,</E> Division 1, OM Code: Section IST (OM Code), which contains requirements for inservice testing (IST) of nuclear power plant components. In response to ASME BPV and OM Code user requests, the ASME develops code cases that provide voluntary alternatives to specific BPV and OM Code requirements. The NRC approves the ASME BPV and OM Codes for use in title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR) 50.55a, “Codes and standards,” through the process of incorporation by reference. As such, each provision of the ASME BPV and OM Codes incorporated by reference into and mandated by 10 CFR 50.55a(a)(1) constitutes a legally binding NRC requirement imposed by rule. As noted previously, the ASME code cases, for the most part, represent alternative approaches for complying with provisions of the ASME BPV and OM Codes. Accordingly, the NRC periodically amends 10 CFR 50.55a(a)(3) to incorporate by reference NRC Regulatory Guides (RGs) listing approved ASME code cases that may be used as voluntary alternatives to the BPV and OM Codes. The NRC staff also maintains RG 1.193, “ASME Code Cases Not Approved for Use,” which is not incorporated by reference into 10 CFR 50.55a, but does provide guidance on which ASME code cases the NRC has determined not to be acceptable for use on a generic basis. Section III of the ASME BPV Code applies to new construction and repair/replacement activities ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the edition and addenda to be used in the construction of a plant are selected based on the date of the construction permit and are not changed thereafter, except voluntarily by the applicant or the licensee). Hence, if a Section III code case is implemented by an applicant or a licensee and a later revision of the code case is approved for use by the RGs listed in 10 CFR 50.55a(a)(3), the applicant or licensee may use either version of the code case, as described in 10 CFR 50.55a(b)(4)(ii). The licensee is still subject, however, to whatever change r ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━