By: Eric Kjolsing

Nuclear power plants around the world are approaching the end of their original 40-year design life.  Efforts are underway to extend the operating license for these plants to 60 years or beyond.  As part of the license extension, it must be demonstrated that the reactor containment building remains able to safely perform its intended functions for the extended duration of operation.  Many of these containment buildings utilize a post-tensioned concrete design where the tendons are grouted after tensioning.  Since these grouted tendons cannot be re-tensioned, an assessment for the loss in prestress beyond the original design life must be performed.

This article describes a methodology to assess the structural performance of a containment structure over time as a function of confidence in the tendon losses and is split into three parts:

1. A description of the methodology
2. A representative probabilistic assessment
3. Representative analysis results

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