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Development of Technical Guidelines
Technical Document (TECDOC-1590) on Guidelines on Application of Reliability Centred Maintenance to Optimize Operation and Maintenance in Nuclear Power Plants
In order to increase Member States capabilities in utilizing good engineering and management practices the Agency has developed a series of Technical Documents (TECDOCs) to describe best practices and members experience in the application of them.
This TECDOC describes the concept of Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) which is the term used to describe a systematic approach to the evaluation, design and development of cost effective maintenance programmes for plant and equipment. The concept has been in existence for over 25 years originating in the civil aviation sector.
This TECDOC supplements previous IAEA publications on the subject and seeks to reflect members experience in the application of the principles involved The process focuses on the functionality of the plant and equipment and the critical failure mechanisms that could result in the loss of functionality. When employed effectively the process can result in the elimination of unnecessary maintenance activities and the identification and introduction of measures to address deficiencies in the maintenance programme.
Overall the process can result in higher levels of reliability for the plant and equipment at reduced cost and demands on finite maintenance resources. The application of the process requires interaction between the operators and the maintenance practitioners which is often lacking in traditional maintenance programmes. The imposition of this discipline produces the added benefit of improved information flows between the key players in plant and equipment management with the result that maintenance activities and operational practices are better informed.
This publication was produced within IAEA programme on nuclear power plants operating performance and life cycle management.
References:
- IAEA- TEDOC- 1315, Nuclear power plant outage optimization strategy (2002).
- IAEA-TECDOC-1393, International outage coding system for Nuclear power plants, (2004).
- IAEA- TEDOC- 1400, Improvement of In-service Inspection in Nuclear Power Plants (2004)
- IAEA-TECDOC-1511, Determining the quality of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) for applications in nuclear power plants (2006)