Life Cycle Management Application at the STARS Plants

Abstract

Six of the southwest and western nuclear plants have formed an alliance to jointly apply and share in new technologies to increase plant reliability. Life cycle management (LCM) is an EPRI developed process to evaluate and select the best long-term maintenance strategies for important plant systems, structures and component groups. Both, technical and economic assessments are made to arrive at a strategy that provides the highest reliability at the least cost. Among those SSCs chosen for LCM are the Station Transformers, the Main Generator, Turbine Controls, Underground Piping and the Circulating Water System (CWS). The application of the LCM process to the STARS plants is demonstrated for the CWS. The process steps from information gathering, establishing component maintenance and performance history, failure rates and current maintenance practices to aging and technical obsolescence assessment are reviewed. Information sources for generic failure rates, best industry practices, PM and PdM technologies, aging/degradation and performance trending are discussed. Lastly, methods for the modeling and analysis of the economic parameters are presented. The results of the CWS LCM plans for four of the STARS plants are compared and conclusions are summarized.