Maintenance Assessment for Advanced Nuclear Power Plants

Proper planning for maintenance and inspection tends to increase the overall availability of nuclear power plants. High potential availability is the basic measure of a successful power plant since replacement power costs are high. The study reported here compared the maintenance and inspection requirements of generic pool and loop type LMFBRs to determine if there were significant differences in these two systems owing to their fundamental difference in design. The size, number and types of failed components affected downtime for maintenance but accessibility and arrangement of components also strongly influenced the downtime.