Maintenance optimization - predictive vs. preventive maintenance

The Long Term Operation Policy for nuclear plants poses new technical challenges on the power industry, since the plants need to be operated reliably for 50 and more years. It is therefore necessary to deal with the degradation behavior of equipment and its predictability in order to reduce maintenance costs and ensure high safety and high availability at the same time. For this reason an effective maintenance strategy needs to be applied for the surveillance of possible aging effects and preventive measures need to be implemented to ensure the necessary technical basis for maintaining safety margins throughout the plant. Beside overall plant safety there is a special focus on reliable component operation what increases the demand for predictive maintenance solutions based on continuous surveillance and efficient monitoring. (author)