Improving power system reliability through standardization with specific reference to nuclear power reactors

Abstract

Important industrial as well as power generating equipment usually shows a gradual growth in the early stages of development. Yet, over the past 20 years, the size of the largest fossil-fuel-fired plant installed each year increased at a compounded rate of 13.3 percent per annum. Nuclear power plants (pressurized water and boiling water) have increased in size at an even larger rate. The technology of these large in conventional terms but small in comparison to the size of the generation of equipment to be installed next is based on demonstration plants. These demonstration plants take the place of prototype plants. Basic engineering data for the commercial nuclear power plants are derived from the design, manufacture, installation, and operation of these demonstration plants. The continuing increase in unit size from 90 MWe in 1957 to 1000 MWe to be installed in 1971 has required concurrent development with production to be sure that plants of progressively increasing size supply power reliably. Results of such developments have to be checked continuously against actual performance data obtained in the operation of plants. The basis from which the scale-up starts has to be well established so that changes required for design, manufacture installation, and operation can be evaluated in relation to past practices and operating experiences. Past practices are codified in standards that become the criteria for evaluating proposed changes. Development of standards in which review activities play a dominant role is a major part in the engineering plan for a nuclear plant. This paper is concerned with the management practice to be applied to ensure reliable performance from power generating plants designed during rapidly evolving states of development in power plant technology. The management practices will cover the gamut from those established for data collection of outages of power plant equipment to those needed to ensure that experiences from operating plants and tests are fed into the new designs of increased size. Appropriate examples from the field of materials engineering that support that value of cited practices are described. The article is intended to highlight the problem of how to arrive at worthwhile standards for the fast-moving nuclear power reactor technology.