Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plants. General Provisions and Organisation

Maintenance makes an important contribution to the challenges faced by the nuclear industry: production safety and competitiveness, plant lifespan, public confidence. While the techniques involved are often fairly "classic", it is above all the conditions under which they are implemented that are special, due to the specific characteristics of the nuclear industry: the high level of reliability required, the need to carry out almost all maintenance during refueling shutdowns, the risks associated with ionizing radiation, stringent quality requirements, monitoring by the "control authorities", etc. As a result, people and their organizations play a vital role, whether they are employees of the operating company or suppliers of products and services.

Experience shows that the keys to success lie as much in the activities to be carried out upstream and downstream as in the maintenance operation itself: quality of training, care taken in preparation, radiation protection measures, professionalized logistics, optimized management of spare parts, long-term partnerships with service providers, documentation, information systems, etc. Everything must be ready when the unit shutdown arrives. Everything has to be in place by the time a unit outage comes around, with countless interdependent activities carried out by a large number of people working simultaneously. And the feedback loop feeds the continuous improvement process.

Two other articles review the main components and their maintenance.