An opportunistic maintenance optimization model for shaft seals in feed-water pump systems in nuclear power plants

Nuclear power is one of the main electricity production sources in Sweden today. Maintenance management is one tool for reducing the costs for operation of a power plant. Driving forces for cost-efficiency has pushed the development of new methods for maintenance planning and optimization forward. Reliability Centered Asset Management (RCAM) is one of these new approaches, and maintenance optimization is one way to perform quantitative analysis which is a feature of RCAM. This paper proposes a model for opportunistic maintenance optimization where replacement schedules for shaft seals in feed-water pump systems in nuclear power plants are constructed. The feed-water pump system is important for the availability of the entire nuclear power plant. Results show that the optimization model is dependent on e.g. the discount interest and a limit for when the optimal solution goes from non-opportunistic to opportunistic is calculated. The circumstances for which opportunistic maintenance could be used have been investigated given different values of discount rates and remaining life at start of the planning period.