Effective maintenance practices to manage system aging

A study for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was recently undertaken to identify effective maintenance practices that could be adapted by the nuclear industry in the United States to assist in managing the aging degradation of plant systems and components. Four organizations were examined to assess the influence of maintenance programs on addressing the system and component aging degradation issues. An effective maintenance program was found to be essential to the management of system and component aging. Four key elements of an effective maintenance program that are important to an aging management were identified: the selection of critical systems and components; the development of an understanding of aging through the collection and analysis of equipment performance information; the development of appropriate preventive and predictive maintenance tasks to manage equipment and system aging degradation; and the use of feedback mechanisms to continuously improve the management of aging systems and components. These elements were found to be common to all four organizations