NRC Endorses Industry Flooding and Seismic Walkdown Guidance

The following story originally appeared in NEI’s Nuclear Energy Overview.

The NRC has endorsed the industry guidance on flooding and seismic walkdowns developed in response to recommendations from the post-Fukushima task force but asked for two changes in in the guidance on flooding.
In a May 31 letter, the agency said that the guidance documents are “responsive” to a request for information issued March 12 on flooding and seismic walkdowns and other issues.

The NRC asked for two changes in the final flooding guidance, both suggested by the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards:

• a citation reference to NUREG-1852, which covers fire protection operator manual actions, as an additional information source licensees may consider when conducting the walkdowns

• adding extreme air temperatures to the list of examples of adverse weather conditions that could be expected to occur in certain situations.

NEI is continuing to discuss these topics with the agency. The NRC has asked the industry to publish final versions of both guidance documents within a month of the May 31 letter.

The agency commended the industry’s efforts in developing the guidance.

“The NRC staff would like to acknowledge that [the guidance documents were] the product of significant interactions between the NRC, NEI, and other stakeholders at numerous public meetings,” the NRC said in the May 31 letters. “These interactions and the insights gained from them allowed for the development of this document in a short time frame.”

Nuclear reactor licensees are expected to complete the walkdowns and forward their findings to the NRC within 180 days of NRC’s endorsement of the guidance.

The industry’s guidance for flooding walkdowns was published by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI 12-07) and for seismic walkdowns by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI 1025286).

The NRC letters endorsing the industry guidance can be found in the NRC’s Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) under accession number ML12144A142 for flooding walkdowns and ML12145A529 for seismic walkdowns.

These are the second and third endorsements of industry guidance responding to NRC post-Fukushima task force recommendations. The first, on emergency response staffing and communications, was received last month.