SP-100 operational life model. Fiscal Year 1990 annual report

This report covers the initial year`s effort in the development of an Operational Life Model (OLM) for the SP-100 Space Reactor Power System. The initial step undertaken in developing the OLM was to review all available documentation from GE on their plans for the OLM and on the degradation and failure mechanisms envisioned for the SP-100. In addition, the DEGRA code developed at JPL, which modelled the degradation of the General Purpose Heat Source based Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (GPHS-RTG), was reviewed. Based on the review of the degradation and failure mechanisms, a list of the most pertinent degradation effects along with their key degradation mechanisms was compiled. This was done as a way of separating the mechanisms from the effects and allowing all of the effects to be incorporated into the OLM. The emphasis was on parameters which will tend to change performance as a function of time and not on those that are simply failures without any prior degradation.