Emergency diesel generator: Maintenance and failure unavailability, and their risk impacts

Technical Report · Tue Nov 01 00:00:00 EST 1994

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/10196692· OSTI ID:10196692

Samanta, P; Kim, I; Uryasev, S; Penoyar, J; Vesely, W ^[1]

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1. Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (United States)

Emergency Diesel Generators (EDGs) provide on-site emergency alternating current (ac) electric power for a nuclear plant in the event that all off-site power sources are lost. Existing regulations establish requirements for designing and testing of these on-site power sources to reduce to an acceptable level the probability of losing all ac power sources. Operating experience with EDGs has raised questions about their testing and maintenance to achieve the EDG reliability levels and the total EDG unavailability experienced (fraction of time EDG is out-of-service due to testing, maintenance, and failures). In this report, recent operating experience is used to assess EDG unavailability due to testing, maintenance, and failures during reactor power operation and during plant shutdown. Recent data show an improvement in EDG reliability, but an increase in EDG unavailability due to maintenance, a significant portion of which is due to routinely scheduled maintenances. Probabilistic safety assessments (PSAs) of selected nuclear power plants are used to assess the risk impact of EDG unavailability due to maintenance and failure during power operation, and during different stages of plant shutdown. The results of these risk analyses suggest qualitative insights for scheduling EDG maintenance that will have minimal impact on risk of operating nuclear power plants.

• Research Organization: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States). Div. of Systems Research; Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76CH00016
• OSTI ID: 10196692
• Report Number(s): NUREG/CR-5994; BNL-NUREG-52363; ON: TI95003974
• Resource Relation: Other Information: PBD: Nov 1994
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
ELECTRIC GENERATORS
DIESEL ENGINES
RELIABILITY
AVAILABILITY
PERFORMANCE TESTING
MAINTENANCE
AUXILIARY SYSTEMS
BLACKOUTS
FAILURES
OPERATION
OUTAGES
PROBABILISTIC ESTIMATION
REACTOR SAFETY
RISK ASSESSMENT
220900
220200
COMPONENTS AND ACCESSORIES