To analyze the integrity of piping components in nuclear power plants (NPPs), the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research and the Electric Power Research Institute jointly developed a probabilistic fracture mechanics computer code. The Extremely Low Probability of Rupture (xLPR) code simulates crack initiation and growth from fatigue and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) degradation mechanisms and other aspects of piping component structural integrity. This presentation provides an overview of the NRC staff’s applications of the xLPR code since its public release in 2020 to assist in risk-informed regulatory evaluations of leak-before-break (LBB) analyses for pressurized water reactor piping systems with dissimilar metal welds susceptible to SCC. Potential use of the xLPR code to estimate loss of coolant accident (LOCA) frequencies and to interface with artificial intelligence machine learning (AI/ML) models are also discussed.
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