Nuclear Plant Journal, March-April 2016 NuclearPlantJournal.com
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doing the paperwork. He’s removed now.
With a tablet, he can do the reporting in a
low dose area. All of our robotic systems,
the inspection systems, the Zephyr
system, the other underwater robots that
we use, remote welding – those are all
designed to keep the worker as far away
from the radioactive source as possible
and have the robots doing that work,
except for very small amounts of time
when workers have to set up and tear
down the robots. So we do everything we
can in an outage to keep the individual
as far away from the source as possible,
limit the time in the high-dose area as
much as possible and, in some cases,
put extra shielding on. So it’s back to the
basics: time, distance, and shielding. We
minimize the time the person’s involved,
maximize the distance away from the
component and make sure the appropriate
amount of shielding is there.
12.
Concluding remarks.
One of our key focuses atWestinghouse
is long-term operation of the plants. We
believe these assets are critical to national
and global security of clean energy, and our
mission is really threefold here.
One is we have to make sure that
the plants are viable economically.
Westinghouse does that with many of the
techniques discussed here to keep outages
short and predictable with reliable return-
to-power dates.
Second is to help make sure that
there aren’t any unplanned shutdowns
for maintenance between the planned
outages. This is called running breaker
to breaker. That means diagnostics of
motors, pumps, valves, whatever, must
provide the fullest confidence to plant
owners that they can run that plant for 18
straight months without any issues.
Third is helping plants extend their
licenses for operation and this means
managing the component assets within
the plants. Plant owners need to feel
confident that they know what it will take
to get that plant license extension from 40
to 60 years or from 60 to 80 years. We do
believe that theseplants have the capability
to operate for 80 years. We have various
component asset management programs
such as reactor coolant pump, motor and
seal equipment reliability program; steam
generator primary side asset management
program; steam generator secondary side
asset management program; etc.
We also draw on our experience
working with the regulator, through
the rules that they have on long-term
operations, and also our background
and experience on when things fail. For
example, you have 20 or so systems in
the plant that routinely cause trips in the
reactor today. About 12 or 13 of those
systems can be improved with digital
I&C upgrades of some sort. We also help
assess when it makes sense to go from
just an I&C replacement part strategy
to a digital upgrade strategy. When we
consider digital upgrades, we determine
the best approach to keep plants’ outages
as short as possible. Usually complete
I&C change-outs are more costly, risky
and expensive. What we’ve been doing
now is what we call it drop-in solutions.
We call them drop-in solutions
because
we
can
use
existing
configurations, such as the existing
cabinet that an I&C system is in. Instead
of having to replace that cabinet, we can
remove the technology it contains and
drop in new digital I&C technology. We
can do this incrementally in one system
at a time, so that the plants don’t have
the risk of the entire I&C system being
changed out in one outage.We can replace
small systems one at a time based on the
highest priorities first that will keep that
plant running.
We believe that these assets are built
to last. We think, especially with the new
nuclear renaissance tapering off, we must
keep our operating nuclear plants online
for as long as we possibly can. And we
very firmly believe that we can do this up
through 60 to 80 years, through economic
viability, breaker-to-breaker runs and
an asset management strategy that’s
prioritized.
Westinghouse continues to develop
the right technology to meet those needs.
Right now, we spend more than 70%
of our entire research and development
budget on long-term operation programs
to make sure that we’re investing in the
right technology that plants need to get to
that 60-to-80-year lifetime.
Contact: Donna Ruff, Westinghouse
Electric Company, telephone: (412) 374-
4705, email:
.
618-244-6000
NEW QUALIFICATIONS TO SUPPORT
Power Uprates
•
License Extension
•
Changes in Postulated Conditions
INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO
OBSOLESCENCE ISSUES
COMMERCIAL GRADE QUALIFICATION AND DEDICATION SINCE 1979
E X P E D I T E D QUA L I F I C AT I ON
D E D I C AT I ON & P E R F O RMAN C E T E S T I NG
Nutherm
International, Inc.
