Abstract :
The commercial operation of light water reactor plants in Japan already has a history of nearly 30 years. Since the beginning of the 1990s, studies have been conducted on aging degradation of nuclear power plants in Japan and abroad and, earlier in 1999, the domestic program of plant life management (PLM) was settled on. The program is based on the results of the PLM Study, which started in 1997. The purpose of the study was to develop the preventive maintenance program with an evaluation of aging degradation for maintaining the functions of plant component equipment. Taking account of the need for proper management of aging degradation, meanwhile, the technical evaluation of aseismic capability of aged plants is also considered to be important. Based on this concept, we evaluated the impact of assumed aging degradation on the aseismic capability of the plant facilities and structures covered by the PLM Study. In the aseismic evaluation, aging degradation modes selected in the PLM Study were divided into two categories—the one is including some degradation modes which impact on the aseismic capability of the facilities and structures should be taken into account, the other is including those whose impact might be ignored. Then the aging degradation modes composing the former one were quantitatively evaluated primarily based on the Technical Guidelines for Aseismic Design of Nuclear Power Plants (JEAG-4601) (). The result of the evaluation indicated that no aging degradation mode to be reflected in the maintenance program was extracted from the viewpoint of securing the aseismic capability of the plant components. However, establishment of rational evaluation methods for aging degradation, e.g. aseismic capability evaluation of thinned piping systems, was made a future technical subject.
