Outage management improvements in Nuclear Electric

The drive for a more efficient nuclear power industry has been the force behind major improvements in many key areas of business over the last few years, none more so than in power station statutory outages. Developments in the way that outages are approached and managed, with a significant emphasis on the enhancement of safety and quality improvements, have brought considerable reductions in outage durations, with advanced gas cooled reactors (AGRs) averaging 150 days in 1990 to 55 days in 1994. Significant improvements continue to be made with the UK's Heysham 2 power station achieving a new AGR outage record of 35 days in 1995 and in 1997 the successful completion of two complex outages requiring major modifications to both reactors and turbines. The author illustrates the reduction in outage durations achieved at Heysham 2. This paper is a case study of the improvements made at Heysham 2 that significantly contributed to that success.