Technical specification changes

Regulatory Guide 1.177 and Standard Review Plan Section 6.1 Technical specification changes (TSC)... 

Management personnel also received an overview in subject areas such as fire protection, leak-before-break, seismic, and communications. The training overviewed the reactor restart plan and items such as plant modifications and upgrades, changes in Technical Specifications, changes in operating procedures, and the purpose of the linking document. 

Letter, P.W. Dickson to F.R. McCoy, "Technical Specification Change Request," March 11, 1991. 

These open items and the related safety analyses are expected to be resolved by May 1, 1991, and will be included in the next planned revision to the Technical Specifications. An emergent Technical Specification change request was submitted to DOE on March 11, 1991 (Reference 7). This change allows both GM diesels to be inoperable when there are no heat generating assemblies in the reactor. The request was approved by DOE on March 15, 1991 (Reference 8) as Revision 1. 

Technical Specification Optimization EOOS can be adapted to show changes in tech spec status, Wbat-if irulyscs, show the effects on plant risk of removing trains of equipment from service. 

Gas pressures in vacuum applications are usually either recorded via membrane transducers, systems that monitor the gas density via partial ionisation of the gas or sensors that make use of the fact that the thermal conductivity or diffusivity of a gas is pressure dependent. The first type of transducer is sensitive to the total gas pressure while the other methods yield gas dependent signals. In terms of application properties such as the response time of the sensor, the sensitivity and the pressure range that the sensor covers are important technical specifications. The response of a membrane pressure sensor to a step-like pressure change is essentially an exponential function characterized by a relaxation time r for a MKS transducer, type Baratron 220 [1], r was determined to be 0.227 s (see Fig. 1), the actual pressure and the value as recorded by the transducer therefore do not match within the error bars given for the sensor until more than a second passed. 

DON T change technical specifications during the negotiations without checking with the appropriate specialists. 

When decisions are considered instigators of the development process, the nature of the available context for taking a decision becomes increasingly important. The requirement specification can serve as a frame of reference through the entire development cycle and as such is an indispensable part of that context. Throughout the development cycle, the subject of the decisions will change with respect to level of detail, level of aggregation, considered domains, etc. To support a well-substantiated decision, the expression of the requirement specification must ally with the characteristics of the decision at hand. As a structure for the alliance, three types of requirement specification can be discerned technical specifications, functional specifications, and scenario-based specifications. 

As part of the USNRC s risk-informed regulatory initiative, low power and shutdown conditions should be considered by a utility when making a risk-informed regulatory submittal request for a change to graded quality assurance, in-service-testing, in-service-inspection, or technical specifications. 

P.S. Pickard, 1999, "Analysis of Criticality Probability for the SPR in its Storage Pit, Proposed Change to SPR Technical Specifications, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, April 27,1999. 

The degradation of the performance of the isolation valves in the re-circulation loop conducted to anticipate the potential operation in a single loop, this is another flexibility that was not assumed in the original design. This mode of operation requires specific operator training and also changes in the license and in the technical specifications. 

The example apphcation of risk criteria is shown on an example of proposed change of technical specifications of nuclear power plant. Technical specifications define the surveillance requirements and limiting conditions for operation of all important safety systems in a nuclear power plant. 

Addressing uncertainties in risk-informed decision-making of changes to nuclear power plant technical specifications... 

Safe operation ofNPP (Nuclear Power Plants) depends on the Technical Specifications (TS), so that TS are part of the Licensee Basis (LB) to operate a NPP, which were established taking into accoimt mainly deterministic criteria. A number of problems have been identified connected to TS that can jeopardize plant safety. The development of PRA (Probabilistic Risk Assessment) and its application since the early 80 s to analyze TS changes has brought the opportunity to review TS consistency from a risk viewpoint, i.e. addressing the impact of the changes on plant safety on the basis of the risk information provided by the PRA, with particular attention to the role of the STI (Surveillance Test Intervals) included within the SR (Surveillance Requirements), and of the AOT (Allowed Outage Times) included within the LCO (Limiting Conditions for Operation),... 

Revisions to the and P-ILeact( Technical Specifications will continue to be made to keep the Technical Specifications current so that they reflect L- and P-Reactor Disassembly Basins as they e st and as tfa are anafyzed in this BIO. The L- and P-Reactor Techmcal Specifications will be revised to incoiporate tiie requirements of Section 7.2 that are related to the L- and P-Reactor Disassembly Basins once this BIO is approved by DOE. Modifications to the L- and P-Reactor Disassembfy Basins, des changes, and changes to the L- and P-Reactor Technical SpedficatuHia shall be sutgected the USQ process pursuant to RDP 12.03 of WSRC Manual RD-1 (Ref 4-19). 

Events on the drift in the setpoints of instrumentation important to safety beyond Technical Specification (TS) limits have been reported in US NPPs, as well as NPPs in other countries. An unplanned change in the setpoint of an instrument will alter the actual value of the measured parameter at which a particular action is to occur. If improper surveillance procedures and/or inadequate setpoint methodology are used, the operability of the aforementioned systems cannot be relied upon to perform the desired safety function. 

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