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Regional Workshop on Plant Life Management and Long Term Operation Issues of VVER type of NPPs, 20–23 October 2008, Budapest, Hungary
A plant life management approach is a tool allowing an operating organization to follow ageing effects in systems, structures and components (SSCs) and to help in making decisions concerning when and how to repair, replace or modify them in an economically optimal way. Plant life management (PLiM) can be seen as a precursor to operation up to and even beyond the original design lifetime – the long term operation (LTO).
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 (NPPs) to that of taking measures to optimize the life cycle of operational plants. National approaches in many countries showed an increase of interest in PLiM for safe LTO, 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 that 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 sell of the produced electricity.
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The workshop was organised by the Agency. The Agency invited experts from France, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, USA, and Hungary.
A total of 34 participants from 9 countries in Eastern Europe region – Armenia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Russian Federation, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine - participated in the workshop and 18 lectures were presented. The workshop consisted of four technical sessions besides the opening and closing sessions:
Session 1: Plant Life Management
Session 2: Ageing Management and Related Programmes
Session 3: Design Modifications, Refurbishment and Replacement of SSCs
Session 4: Current Research and Development Results
In the workshop closing session, it has been emphasized that it should be considered:
Harmonisation of various approaches in order to assess integrity and mutually compare actual condition of the major passive SSCs,
Long term experience in some Member States with replacement of major passive SSCs (steam generators, reactor vessel heads),
Outage optimizations with respect to the experience in pressurized water reactor operating countries (France, Korea, USA),
Use and standardization of new techniques used for examination / investigation of SSCs ageing / degradation, particularly for detecting of stress corrosion cracking in critical hot spots in VVER type of NPPs, e.g. heat exchanging tubes in steam generators, main circulation pipeline and connected safety related piping (pressurizer, emergency core cooling system).
References:
- Safe Long Term Operation of Nuclear Power Plants, IAEA-SRS-57 , IAEA, Vienna (2008)
- Plant Life Management for Long Term Operation of Light Water Reactors, IAEA-TRS-448, IAEA, Vienna (2006)
- Safety Aspects of Long Term Operation of Water Moderated Reactors Recommendations on the Scope and Content of Programmes for Safe Long Term Operation, IAEA-EBP-SALTO, Vienna (2007)