5. Conclusion

The Equipment Reliability Process Description AP913 developed by INPO provides US nuclear power plant operators with an integrated set of methods and tools for maintaining high levels of safety, reliability and availability throughout the lifetime of their production facilities. The AP913 provides a guide of recommendations which does not impose any regulatory constraints on operators, but certain points of the approach must nevertheless comply with the NRC's Maintenance Rule, whose implementation has been mandatory since 1996. For points concerning the assessment and identification of critical components, the continuous improvement of equipment reliability and the implementation of preventive maintenance, it proposes an approach modelled on the MBF developed by Nowlan and Heap in 1978. Other actions are advocated to form a coherent set of facility management measures, known as Asset Management:...