Improved Economics of Nuclear Plant Life Management
The adoption of new on-line monitoring, diagnostic and eventually prognostics technologies has the potential to impact the economics of the existing nuclear power plant fleet, new plants and future advanced designs. To move from periodic inspection to on-line monitoring for condition based maintenance and eventually prognostics will require advances in sensors, better understanding of what and how to measure within the plant; enhanced data interrogation, communication and integration; new predictive models for damage/aging evolution; system integration for real world deployments; quantification of uncertainties in what are inherently ill-posed problems and integration of enhanced condition based maintenance/prognostics philosophies into new plant designs, operation and O&M approaches. The move to digital systems in petrochemical, process and fossil fuel power plants is enabling major advances to occur in the instrumentation, controls and monitoring systems and approaches employed. The adoption within the nuclear power community of advanced on-line monitoring and advanced diagnostics has the potential for the reduction in costly periodic surveillance that requires plant shut-down , more accurate cost-benefit analysis, “just-in-time” maintenance, pre-staging of maintenance tasks, move towards true “operation without failures” and a jump start on advanced technologies for new plant concepts, such as those under the International Gen IV Program. There are significant opportunities to adopt condition-based maintenance when upgrades are implemented at existing facilities. The economic benefit from a predictive maintenance program based upon advanced on-line monitoring and advanced diagnostics can be demonstrated from a cost/benefit analysis. An analysis of the 104 US legacy systems has indicated potential savings at over $1B per year when applied to all key equipment; a summary of the supporting analysis is provided in this paper.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 962859
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-56413; NN3001010; TRN: US0902951
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Nuclear Power Plant Life Management: Proceedings of an International Symposium , IAEA Paper IAEA-CN-155-008KS
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
COMMUNICATIONS
DIGITAL SYSTEMS
ECONOMICS
FOSSIL-FUEL POWER PLANTS
MAINTENANCE
MANAGEMENT
MONITORING
NUCLEAR POWER
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
on-line monitoring
nuclear power
life management