Maintaining qualified life of equipment and parts in nuclear power plants

This paper describes certain approaches which may extend the available qualified life of an item (the term item is used to designate an item of equipment or a part of an equipment item) during storage or during in plant service. These approaches include: reduction of the time period between manufacturing an item and supplying it to the plant, and reforming of items in storage. The use of existing information available in the industry standards and sharing of results of qualification test efforts among various users are emphasized. The purpose of this paper is to invite industry's attention to the need for coordination in the existing qualification test and analysis efforts. The paper aims at initiating additional research efforts needed to provide directions to ensure maintenance of qualified life