Inservice Inspection

["ERIC GOLDIN"<goldinem@songs.sce.com>]

     One last point about reactor inservice inspections.  Quoting from 
     the press release:
     
     "the RI-ISI methodology is so focused, workers can reduce by up 
     to 75 percent the number of inspections they must perform in 
     radiological areas when compared to traditional inspection 
     methodology,'' he said.  Therefore, RI-ISI can easily reduce 
     cumulative dose rates by 60 REM or more over a 10-year period..."
     
     Remember that any technology that can reduce the number of 
     inspections is also going to cost a whole lot less ($ in addition 
     to dose).  Therefore, in this day of cost competitive electricity 
     generation, risk-informed ISI has a significant $-savings.  As 
     far as the dose savings, 60 person-rem over 10 years may not 
     sound like much, but when plants are scrambling to reduce 
     personnel exposure wherever possible and totals for a refueling 
     outage hover around 100 person-rem, 10 or so avoided is a pretty 
     big number (assuming a refueling every 20-odd months, yada 
     yada...)
     
     And by the way, some ISI can be conducted when the plant is 
     running, such as inspections of safety injection piping, shutdown 
     cooling (RHR to you Westinghouse folks), as long as it's outside 
     containment.  May not get done often due to schedules, personnel 
     availability, system operability requirements, etc. 
     
     Eric Goldin,  not my employer's opinion, only mine
     <goldinem@songs.sce.com>

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