Oakridge Consulting International (OCI)

The team of Oakridge Consulting International (OCI) from USA will make significant contributions to the objectives of APAL, given its history (which extends over several decades) of providing technical bases to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) for regulation of the US fleet of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Highlights of OCI’s prior experience impacting contributions to APAL include

• Development of the FAVOR (Fracture Analysis of Vessels – Oak Ridge) computational platform for probabilistic structural integrity assessment of reactor pressure vessels (RPVs). It is OCI’s view that FAVOR ver.16.1 and supporting codes embody the current state-of-the-art methodology for probabilistic integrity assessment of RPVs; it is noted that FAVOR is distributed and applied internationally in Europe and the Far East.
• Generation of technical bases for the more recent USNRC rule, Alternate Fracture Toughness Requirements for Protection against Pressurized Thermal Shock Events, found in US Code of Federal Regulations-Title 10 Part 50.61a. Those technical bases are in large measure based on the OCI applications of FAVOR methodology to analyses of US NPPs selected from a cross-section of nuclear vendors.
• Members of the OCI team have recently participated in the evaluation of Belgium-Electrabel Safety Cases for Doel 3 / Tihange 2 nuclear plants. The OCI efforts focused on applications of the FAVOR computational tool to assessment of the several thousand quasi-laminar flaws found in those vessels; the OCI findings made a significant contribution to the Belgian-FANC decision to restart the two plants.

Moreover, OCI has been involved in several international research and innovation activities/EC networks related to APAL: ATLAS+, FALSIRE, ICAS, PROSIR. Within APAL, OCI will contribute to the work of WP1 to WP4 and will participate in development of best-practice guidance (WP5), as well as dissemination of results (WP6).