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Nuclear Power Engineering

Plant Life Management for Safe Long Term Operation

For the past couple of decades there has been a change of emphasis in the world nuclear power from that of building new Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) to that of taking measures to optimize the life cycle of operational plants. National approaches in many countries showed an increase of interest in Plant Life Management (PLiM) for safe long term operation, both in terms of plant service life assurance and in optimizing the service or operational life of NPP.

The safety considerations of a NPP are paramount and those requirements have to be met to obtain and to extend/renew the operating license. To achieve the goal of the long term safe, economic and reliable operation of the plant, PLiM programme is essential. Some countries already have advanced PLiM programmes while others still have none. The PLiM objective is to identify all those factors and requirements for the overall plant life cycle. The optimization of these requirements would allow for the minimum period of the investment return and maximum of the revenue from the sale of the produced electricity.

Recognizing the importance of this issue and in response to the requests of the Member States the IAEA Division of Nuclear Power implements the Sub-programme on "Engineering and Management Support for Competitive Nuclear Power". Three projects within this sub-programme deal with different aspects of the NPP life cycle management with the aim to increase the capabilities of interested Member States in implementing and maintenance of the competitive and sustainable nuclear power.

Although all three projects contain certain issues of PLiM, there is one specific project on guidance on engineering and management practices for optimization of NPP service life. This particular project deals with different specific issues of PLiM including aspects of ageing phenomena and their monitoring, issues of control and instrumentation, maintenance and operation issues, economic evaluation of PLiM including guidance on its earlier shut down and decommissioning.

Plant life management (PLiM) is the process by which nuclear power plants integrate their operations, maintenance, engineering, regulatory, environmental, and economic planning activities in order to manage the material condition of a plant (ageing and obsolescence of systems, structures and components), optimize plant operating life (and consider the options of early plant retirement as well as licence renewal and plant life extension), and maximize plant value while maintaining plant safety.

The benefits of PLiM planning are:

• To identify components that are critical to plant safety and power generation

• To identify ageing degradation mechanisms that can lead to an unexpected/unplanned functional failure

• To provide opportunities for value creation through consideration of the effects of alternative operation and maintenance practices

• To provide financially optimized, long-term ageing management plans

• To optimize reliability, availability, capacity factor, O&M cost, capital cost and staffing

• To integrate these to achieve: lowest cost/kWh while maintaining safe operation over the life of plant

The IAEA develops international guidance to improve PLiM programmes for long term operation and delivers training, technical assistance and equipment to Member States.

Activities in 2012

Activities in 2011

Activities in 2010

Activities in 2009

Technical Cooperation Projects Activities

Recently Published Documents

• IAEA TECDOC Series IAEA-TECDOC-1651 Information Technology for Nuclear Power Plant Configuration Management (2010)

• IAEA TECDOC Series IAEA-TECDOC-1627 Pressurized Thermal Shock in Nuclear Power Plants: Good Practices for Assessment (2010)

• IAEA Nuclear Energy Series NP-T-3.1 Risk-informed In-service Inspection of Piping Systems of Nuclear Power Plants: Process, Status, Issues and Development (2010)

• IAEA TECDOC Series IAEA-TECDOC-1631 Master Curve Approach to Monitor Fracture Toughness of Reactor Pressure Vessels in Nuclear Power Plants (2009)

• IAEA Nuclear Energy Series NP-T-3.11 Integrity of Reactor Pressure Vessels in Nuclear Power Plants: Assessment of Irradiation Embrittlement Effects in Reactor Pressure Vessel Steels (2009)

• IAEA Nuclear Energy Series NP-T-3.2 Heavy Component Replacement in Nuclear Power Plants: Experience and Guidelines (2008)

• IAEA TECDOC Series IAEA-TECDOC-1590 Application of Reliability Centred Maintenance to Optimize Operation and Maintenance in Nuclear Power Plants (2008)

• IAEA TECDOC Series IAEA-TECDOC-1577 Strategy for Assessment of WWER Steam Generator Tube Integrity (2007)

• Bibliography focusing on Ageing Management / Plant Life Management, and Long-term Operation (PLiM-LTO)

Publications under Development

• Material Sciences of Metallic Structures of Stress Corrosion Cracking in Nuclear Power Plant

• Technical Indices of Ageing Degradation Mechanisms (International Generic Ageing Lessons Learned (GALL) /Knowledge base)

• Water Chemistry, Corrosion Control for Secondary Side of WWER

Other Activities

• Cooperation with EC-Joint Research Center

• Technical Working Group on Life Management of Nuclear Power Plants (TWG-LMNPP)

Please contact PLiM - Contact Point if you have any questions