Prognostics and life beyond 60 years for nuclear power plants

Safe, secure, reliable, and sustainable energy supply is vital for advanced and industrialized life styles. To meet growing energy demand there is interest in longer-term operation for the existing nuclear power plant fleet and enhancing capabilities in new build. There is increasing use of condition-based maintenance for active components and growing interest in deploying on-line monitoring instead of periodic in-service inspection for passive systems. Opportunities exist to move beyond monitoring and diagnosis based on pattern recognition and anomaly detection to prognostics with the ability to provide an estimate of remaining useful life. The adoption of digital I&C systems provides a framework within which added functionality including on-line monitoring can be deployed, and used to maintain and even potentially enhance safety, while at the same time improving planning and reducing both operations and maintenance costs.