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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
Ronald R. Winget
Nuclear Technology | Volume 85 | Number 1 | April 1989 | Pages 7-11
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A34222
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Based on personal and industrial experiences, Point Beach Nuclear Plant personnel have developed a secondary in-service inspection program to detect and quantify significant service-related degradation and preexisting conditions in piping systems that could jeopardize the integrity of those systems in the future. The underlying objective of the program is to look at piping components whose failure could result in significant personnel or equipment damage. The primary concern is to locate areas of severe erosion-corrosion in carbon steel piping prior to the occurrence of a leak or catastrophic rupture. In addition, certain welds are examined to locate areas of significant fatigue damage demonstrated by service-related flaw extension or crack growth. Using an internally developed computer model called the Badness Factor Program, plant personnel rank components as to their susceptibility to erosion-corrosion and stress-induced fatigue. It uses hydrodynamic variables to assign a factor to each component and fitting so a comparison of the relative magnitudes of this factor can be made for a given system or piping section. A qualitative decision is then made as to where the most likely location is for degradation.