An evaluation approach for opportunistic maintenance optimization models for nuclear power plants

Nuclear power constitutes one of the main electricity production sources in several countries, e.g. in Sweden, with about half of today´s electricity production. Driving forces for cost-efficiency have 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 stochastic framework for evaluating opportunistic maintenance optimization models for the generation of replacement schedules for shaft seals in feed-water pump systems in nuclear power plants. Results show that the extended discounted model has a good overall performance, when compared to other strategies. Moreover, it is shown that it is the best strategy for high values of the constant cost for maintenance and the second best for lower values of the constant cost.