Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Integrated Program Plan
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Prognostics and Health Management in Nuclear Power Plants: A Review of Technologies and Applications
Recent years have seen a resurgence of nuclear power worldwide, with interest in extending the operating life of the approximately 436 reactors currently in service (as of March, 2012), 61 new reactors being constructed, and as many as 162 under consideration. Renewed worldwide interest in nuclear power has been somewhat tempered by the March 2011 incident at Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan. However, nuclear power is still considered a key element in meeting future worldwide sustainable energy, energy security, and emissions goals. Currently, three separate thrusts to safe and economical nuclear power development for energy security are being pursued in the United States: (i) longer term operation for the legacy fleet, from 40-60 and possibly 60-80 years; (ii) near-term new nuclear plants with a 60-year design life; and (iii) small modular reactors, which are expected to employ light water reactor technology at least in the medium term. Within these activities, attention is turning to enhanced methods for plant component and structural health management.The operating U.S. fleet includes 104 light water reactors. In addition, there are now (as of May 2012) four new nuclear power plants (AP-1000 plants) under construction in the United States, and two delayed plants are being completed by the Tennessee Valley Authority. There is also interest in the United States in small modular reactors (SMRs), which could be easier to match to existing grid infrastructure and which could replace aging coal fired plants. The current low price for natural gas presents a challenge to the economics of nuclear power, at least in the short term; however, some recent studies have demonstrated that nuclear generation will be competitive in the longer term (at least in some markets) when anticipated escalation in gas prices and the cost of building, operating, and maintaining gas-fired plants are considered over those same time periods.This report reviews the current state of the art of prognostics and health management (PHM) for nuclear power systems and related technology currently applied in field or under development in other technological application areas, as well as key research needs and technical gaps for increased use of PHM in nuclear power systems. The historical approach to monitoring and maintenance in nuclear power plants (NPPs), including the Maintenance Rule for active components and Aging Management Plans for passive components, are reviewed. An outline is given for the technical and economic challenges that make PHM attractive for both legacy plants through Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) and new plant designs. There is a general introduction to PHM systems for monitoring, fault detection and diagnostics, and prognostics in other, non-nuclear fields. The state of the art for health monitoring in nuclear power systems is reviewed. A discussion of related technologies that support the application of PHM systems in NPPs, including digital instrumentation and control systems, wired and wireless sensor techno...
Prognostics and Health Management in Nuclear Power Plants: A Review of Technologies and Applications
Recent years have seen a resurgence of nuclear power worldwide, with interest in extending the operating life of the approximately 436 reactors currently in service (as of March, 2012), 61 new reactors being constructed, and as many as 162 under consideration. Renewed worldwide interest in nuclear power has been somewhat tempered by the March 2011 incident at Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan. However, nuclear power is still considered a key element in meeting future worldwide sustainable energy, energy security, and emissions goals. Currently, three separate thrusts to safe and economical nuclear power development for energy security are being pursued in the United States: (i) longer term operation for the legacy fleet, from 40-60 and possibly 60-80 years; (ii) near-term new nuclear plants with a 60-year design life; and (iii) small modular reactors, which are expected to employ light water reactor technology at least in the medium term. Within these activities, attention is turning to enhanced methods for plant component and structural health management.The operating U.S. fleet includes 104 light water reactors. In addition, there are now (as of May 2012) four new nuclear power plants (AP-1000 plants) under construction in the United States, and two delayed plants are being completed by the Tennessee Valley Authority. There is also interest in the United States in small modular reactors (SMRs), which could be easier to match to existing grid infrastructure and which could replace aging coal fired plants. The current low price for natural gas presents a challenge to the economics of nuclear power, at least in the short term; however, some recent studies have demonstrated that nuclear generation will be competitive in the longer term (at least in some markets) when anticipated escalation in gas prices and the cost of building, operating, and maintaining gas-fired plants are considered over those same time periods.This report reviews the current state of the art of prognostics and health management (PHM) for nuclear power systems and related technology currently applied in field or under development in other technological application areas, as well as key research needs and technical gaps for increased use of PHM in nuclear power systems. The historical approach to monitoring and maintenance in nuclear power plants (NPPs), including the Maintenance Rule for active components and Aging Management Plans for passive components, are reviewed. An outline is given for the technical and economic challenges that make PHM attractive for both legacy plants through Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) and new plant designs. There is a general introduction to PHM systems for monitoring, fault detection and diagnostics, and prognostics in other, non-nuclear fields. The state of the art for health monitoring in nuclear power systems is reviewed. A discussion of related technologies that support the application of PHM systems in NPPs, including digital instrumentation and control systems, wired and wireless sensor techno...
universities, commercial NDE service vendors and cable manufacturers, and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).The motivation for the R&D roadmap comes from the need to address the aging management of incontainment cables at nuclear power plants (NPPs). The most important criteria for cable performance is its ability to withstand a design basis accident. With nearly 1000 km of power, control, instrumentation, and other cables typically found in an NPP, it would be a significant undertaking to inspect all of the cables. Degradation of the cable jacket, electrical insulation, and other cable components is a key issue that is likely to affect the ability of the currently-installed cables to operate safely and reliably for another 20 to 40 years beyond the initial operating life. The development of one or more NDE techniques and models that could assist in determining the remaining life expectancy of cables or their current degradation state would be of significant interest. The ability to non-destructively determine material and electrical properties of cable jackets and insulation without disturbing the cables or connections is essential.The major emphasis of the workshop focused on the chemical changes in the material caused by the environment (thermal, radiation, and moisture, its relationship to mechanical, physical, and electrical property changes of dielectric materials used in cable insulation and jackets and the current state-of-theart in NDE techniques for detecting aging and degradation of cables. The only current technique accepted by industry to measure cable elasticity (the gold standard for determining cable insulation degradation) is the indentation measurement. All other NDE techniques are used to find flaws in the cable and do not provide information to determine the current health or life expectancy.Currently, there is no single NDE technique that can satisfy all of the requirements needed for making a life expectancy determination, but a wide range of methods have been evaluated for use in NPPs as a part of a continuous evaluation program. The commonly used methods are indentation and visual inspection, but these are only suitable for easily accessible cables. Several NDE methodologies utilizing electrical techniques are in use today for flaw detection but there are none that can predict the life of a cable.The results from the workshop identified three key areas of importance:1. Determine key indicators of cable aging that correlate with measureable changes in material properties at the macroscopic scale.iv 2. Advance state-of-the-art in current cable NDE methods and develop new and transformational NDE methods to enable in-situ cable condition measurements that can be used to assess remaining life expectancy. The data for these developments would be collected from samples generated in laboratory cable aging experiments as well as field samples.3. Develop models for predicting remaining useful life of cables based on condition indices. The data for these models would come from existing d...
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