CANDU Life management workshop on 'HTS aging management'

With the aging of the CANDU reactors, there is an increasing need to understand the age related degradation mechanisms of various systems, components and equipment to ensure safe and reliable operation of reactors in the current competitive electricity market. A good knowledge of degradation mechanisms will assist the utilities in developing a sound maintenance and life cycle management strategy to manage these challenges and to maximize the station performance. To manage these challenges, it is essential that the utility staff as well as the designers and service providers are fully aware of the component aging issues and experience at various operating plants and the existing strategies to address these issues. In order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge regarding the life cycle management amongst the CANDU utilities and nuclear support service providers, Canadian Nuclear Society initiated a workshop series on Life Cycle Management. Under this initiative, based on the current main concerns of the industry, the first workshop in the series was organized on the topic of 'HTS aging management'. This paper provides a summary of the discussions from various sessions of the workshop. This information is expected to be of benefit to all the utility staff in raising the awareness of the issues regarding Life Cycle Management in general and HTS aging in particular. (author)