Sweden: National approach to ageing management

Since the adoption of the 1997 act of parliament concerning the abolishment of nuclear power in Sweden, plant lives are no longer limited until 2010 as they were following the referendum in 1980. Therefore the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) in its general regulations from 2004 introduced general requirements for nuclear power plants to develop AMPs which should have been in place by the end of 2005. These requirements are unchanged in the current regulations of the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM), SSMFS 2008:1. The authority's regulatory strategy is not to provide detailed regulations but to ensure that the licensees take the full responsibility for the safety of their plants the detailed contents of the programmes have not been stipulated by SSM. SSM considers that an AMP should coordinate, and where necessary, extend, the plant efforts in other programmes such as maintenance, monitoring, inspection, environmental qualification, chemistry, periodic testing and surveillance programmes all of which should already exist. In this way an integrated and long term approach to these issues can be ensured and become a natural part in the overall management of the plant. To this end it is important that the AMP, as all other central programmes and processes, is documented in the quality assurance system, overall management system and is included in the underlying safety analysis report of the plant. The AMPs will be assessed through a combination of inspection and document reviews as part of the normal supervision process of SSM. Thereafter it is anticipated that the major regulatory effort will be concentrated to the assessment of the PSRs to determine the effectiveness of the programmes and whether further specific regulatory action is required. This will become particularly important for reactors that are planning for LTO. SSM will also continue its active involvement in national and international research efforts to improve the understanding of ageing and degradation mechanisms