The maintenance of nuclear power plants

Maintenance -together with operations and management- is one of the three main activities of operators of standard thermic of nuclear power stations. In 1984, maintenance represented an annual expenditure of 3.5-billion Francs (about 345-million dollars) just for the nuclear sector in France. (Total expenditure in 1985 was about 10-billion Francs -about one billion dollars- not counting fuel costs). Maintenance tasks employ 8,000 of the 23,000 employees of the thermic production service of the French Electricity Board (EDF). The maintenance plans now being carried-out in France aim at improving the results and the performances of the country's power stations, notably the nuclear power stations. This article attempts to situate these results. It first of all briefly describes various nuclear power plants in the world and then deals with the organization of thermic production in relation to all of the standardized production periods. Following a description of results, possible fields of action for the future are outlined