Database for assessing the life expectancy of pressure-retaining components in nuclear power plants

In order to extend the service life of nuclear power plants (NPPs) it is essential to guarantee the integrity of components both during operation and in the event of system disturbances. The integrity of components is guaranteed by: components of a sufficiently high manufacturing quality, appropriate operational monitoring of loads and the damage mechanisms resulting from this, and the correct selection of the locations at which recurrent inspections should be provided. All these data are merged continuously (parallel to operation) with the maintenance data in a database so that current information on the state of the individual components in the power plant is always available, thus supplying reliable values for the extrapolation of service life expectation in the future operation.