NUREG-1537, Part 2 - NRC

CHAPTER 10
accidents including malfunctions of experimental facilities. The applicant should
also analyze the possibility of the expeimental facility causing a malfunction of the
reactor systems. The analysis should support the requirement that there be no
undue risk to the health and safety of the public. In some cases, most notably with
fueled experiments, the failure of the experiment can be the maximum hypothetical
accident (MHA) for the reactor facility. Also, experiment failures could result in
the maximum reactivity addition accident Experiment failures and consequences
should be analyzed in Chapter 13, 'Accident Analyses," of the SAR.
The reviewer should examine the design bases, facility descriptions, functional and
safety analyses, and the applicant's safety conclusions for all experimental facilities.
For those experimental facilities that are permanently attached to the reactor
support structure, reactor vessel, or pool hardware, this chapter of the SAR should
contain an analysis of the structural design and potential impact on reactor
operation. For those experimental facilities that penetrate the reactor vessel below
any primary coolant water level, an analysis of the experimental design should
demonstrate that the design is resistant to failure and that if failure occurs, it is
considered or bounded by the analysis in Chapter 13 for a loss-of-coolant accident
(LOCA). The placement or utilization of experimental facilities shall not
compromise the functionality of any reactor safety systems or engineered safety
features. The applicant should discuss the capabilities, limitations, and controls on
reactor operation, including engineering or procedural controls for experiments,
that ensure personnel radiation doses do not exceed the requirements of 10 CFR
Part 20 and are consistent with the facility program for maintaining exposure to
radiation as low as is reasonably achievable (ALARA).
Because of the potentially unlimited variety of experiments that can be performed
in a non-power reactor, it is important that administrative controls are adequate to
ensure that the health and safety of the public are protected. Not all of the actual
experiments to be performed need be discussed in detail in this chapter of the SAR,
but the limiting and enveloping features of the experiments and the administrative
procedures used by the applicant to safely review, approve, and control
experiments should be described. The applicant should provide the bases for the
experiment-related technical specification limiting conditions for operation (LCOs)
and a detailed description and justification of the experment review and
acceptance program that are then specified in the technical specifications.
10.1 Summary Description
In this section of the SAR, the applicant should briefly describe the principal
features of the experimental and irradiation facilities associated with the reactor.
The reviewer should ensure that the applicant has discussed the scope of the
experimental program and defined what is considered to be an experiment. Some
applicants consider operation to conduct surveillances to be an experiment. This is J
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