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Maintaining the Atom U.S. Nuclear Power Plant Life and the 80-Year Maintenance Regulation Regime

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Maintaining the Atom U.S. Nuclear Power Plant Life and the 80-Year Maintenance Regulation Regime Maintaining the Atom U.S. Nuclear Power Plant Life and the 80-Year Maintenance Regulation Regime Daniel Paul Miller Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Science and Technology Studies Sonja D. Schmid Patrick S. Roberts David Tomblin Lee Vinsel 09 December 2019 Falls Church, Virginia Keywords: nuclear power, reactor, policy, government regulation, maintenance, maintenance rule, large technological system theory, safety, system failure, end-of-life Maintaining the Atom U.S. Nuclear Power Plant Life and the 80-Year Maintenance Regulation Regime Daniel Paul Miller ABSTRACT Large, ever more complex, technological systems surround us and provide products and services that both construct and define much of what we consider as modern society. Our societal bargain is the trade-off between the benefits of our technologies and our constant vigilance over the safe workings and the occasional failures of these often hazardous sociotechnical systems during their operating life. Failure of a system’s infrastructure, whether a complex subsystem or a single component, can cause planes to crash, oil rigs to burn, or the release of radioactivity from a nuclear power plant. To prevent catastrophes, much depends not only on skilled and safe operations, but upon the effective maintenance of these systems. Using the commercial nuclear power industry, of the United States, as a case study, this dissertation examines how nuclear power plant maintenance functions to ensure the plants are reliable and can safely operate for, potentially, eighty years; the current, government regulation defined limit, of their functional life. This study explores the history of U.S. nuclear maintenance regulatory policy from its early Cold War political precursors, the effect of the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor melt-down accident, through its long development, and finally its implementation by nuclear power licensees as formal maintenance programs. By investigating the maintenance of nuclear power plants this research also intends to expand the conceptual framework of large- technological-system (LTS) theory, in general, by adding a recognizable, and practically achievable, end-of-life (EOL) phase to the heuristic structure. The dissertation argues that maintenance is a knowledge producing technology that not only keeps a sociotechnical system operating through comprehension, but can be a surveillance instrument to make system end-of-life legible; that is both visible and understandable. With a discernible and legible view of system end-of-life, operators, policy makers, and the public can make more informed decisions concerning a system’s safety and its continued usefulness in society. Maintaining the Atom U.S. Nuclear Power Plant Life and the 80-Year Maintenance Regulation Regime Daniel Paul Miller GENERAL AUDIENCE ABSTRACT Large, ever more complicated, technical systems surround us and provide products and services that define much of what we consider as modern society. Our societal bargain is the trade-off between the benefits of our technologies and our constant vigilance over the safe workings and the occasional failures of these often hazardous systems during their operating life. Failure of a system’s infrastructure, whether a complex subsystem or a single component, can cause planes to crash, oil rigs to burn, or the release of radioactivity from a nuclear power plant. To prevent catastrophes, much depends not only on skilled and safe operations, but upon the effective maintenance of these systems. Using the commercial nuclear power industry, of the United States, as a case study, this dissertation examines how nuclear power plant maintenance functions to ensure the plants are reliable and can safely operate for, potentially, eighty years; the current, government regulation defined limit, of their functional life. This study explores the history of U.S. nuclear maintenance regulatory policy from its early Cold War political precursors, the effect of the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor melt-down accident, through its long development, and finally its implementation by nuclear power licensees as formal maintenance programs. By investigating the maintenance of nuclear power plants this research also intends to develop a method to determine when a nuclear power plant, or other large technological system, is approaching or has reached the end of its reliable and safe operational life. The dissertation presents maintenance as a technology of knowledge that not only keeps a system operating through understanding of its components, but can be a general surveillance instrument to make system end-of- life legible. With a discernible and understandable view of end-of-life, operators, policy makers, and the public can make more informed decisions concerning a system’s safety and its continued usefulness to society. To Tomiko-san C7 ACKNOWLEDEMENTS Truly successful and meaningful endeavors are not the creation of one person. This work is not an exception. I was extremely fortunate to have an outstanding group of people who shared not only their expertise and experience, but provided me unfailing support from the conceptual beginning of this project to what you are now reading. Of course, my thanks and gratitude go to my doctoral committee: the chair, Dr. Sonja D. Schmid, and committee members, Dr. Patrick S. Roberts, Dr. David Tomblin, and Dr. Lee Vinsel. Dr. Schmid guided me professionally and enthusiastically from the beginnings of my course work, to deciding upon a research topic, and through the shaping and reshaping of this dissertation. She continually challenged me to expand and clarify my thinking and ultimately made this work better in every respect. Dr. Schmid is an amazing scholar, advisor, mentor, and friend. Another outstanding scholar, and committee member, Dr. Roberts, brought forward insight on general organizational theory and high reliability organizations. His thinking also helped me better assess the historical socio-political contexts that formed a policy and technical environment that ultimately forced the creation of a formal nuclear maintenance regime. Dr. Tomblin kept my work in touch with the science and technology studies discipline. He consistently provided me preceptive feedback on my technical descriptions and analyses that helped me effectively examine the nuclear sociotechnical system. Finally, C77 Dr. Vinsel introduced to me his scholarly expertise on maintenance. His thoughts reshaped my own views on maintenance and added a broader and more enhanced dimension to my study of nuclear systems maintenance. I could not have asked for a better committee. This work would have not been possible without the technical librarians of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Public Document Room (PDR): Mary Mendiola, Anne Perrera Goel, and Sardar Zuberi, all deserve a tremendous thank you for their professional and dedicated work. They are maintaining the continued effective legibility of historical information. Much of my research sources were government documents from the PDR’s archive. While the documents could usually be located through databases searches there were some obscure primary sources that required the experience of the technical librarians to locate. These were not trivial sources, but were key historical documents that allowed me to fully understand the development of nuclear maintenance programs. The efforts of Ms. Mendiola, Ms. Perrera Goel and Ms. Zuberi demonstrate that professional librarians can contribute immeasurably to practical research and the understanding of public and private organizations, decision making, and policy development and implementation. Also, I wish to thank the NRC’s historian, Dr. Thomas Wellock. I was fortunate to have him there at the conceptual beginning of this project. He encouraged me to pursue an examination of the politics and the practicalities of U.S. nuclear power plant maintenance. As the resident expert of NRC history Dr Wellock recognized that study C777 of the formalization of nuclear maintenance would be a useful and interesting pursuit since it has remained largely unexamined. Although this work focused exclusively on the maintenance of commercial nuclear power plants in the United States, I also owe considerable thanks to Kenji Tateiwa of the Tokyo Electric Power Company. He shaped my thinking by providing me a keen comparative perspective of how nuclear systems are professionally managed in Japan. Furthermore, his own professional technical briefs of the recovery operations at Fukushima Daiichi, reemphasized to me the extreme consequences of large technological system failure. I also cannot thank my anonymous interviewees enough for the time they voluntarily devoted to my research. They hailed from inside and outside the commercial nuclear industry and from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They provided me the practical real-world experience and insight of working with and within the commercial nuclear power industry. The interviewees were both professionally and personally candid and especially enthusiastic about relating their experiences. They are an impressive group and represented the nuclear community extraordinarily well with their technical and policy expertise and experience. They are true system professionals. Finally, I most ardently wish to thank my best friend, true supporter, and wife, Tomiko Miller.
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