Operational plant lifetime assessment - UK national nuclear laboratory experience - 15366

Inspection and monitoring of the condition of key plant assets at the Sellafield Site is an important task in helping to enable the continued operation of the reprocessing and waste management facilities. This takes place within a range of environments, from non-active areas to highly active black cells where no man-access is possible. NNL staff work closely with the plant operators and other contractors in carrying out inspection and monitoring tasks, and have a particular expertise in the black cell environments where increased challenges exist. As plants age more work is required in order to underpin ongoing operations and understand the operational lifetime of key assets in order to achieve maximum throughput and utilisation. This paper discusses how expertise in a variety of different technical disciplines is combined in order to both understand and extend the operational life of the Highly Active (HA) evaporators at Sellafield, and a small number of further similar examples are also discussed. (authors)