Reliable reactor coolant pump seal performance - the station's role

During the early days of the Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) power reactor program, operators and designers learned that close attention to reactor coolant pump (RCP) seals was imperative for achieving high-capacity factors. This lesson was driven home by unpredictable and frequent seal failures in the following early CANDU plants. Those seal failures caused forced outages, maintenance/dose burdens, and heavy-water losses. Because then-available industrial seal technology proved inadequate in providing satisfactory fixes, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) began a major effort to understand seal performance, develop improved designs, and evolve the station technology needed to attain the RCP seal reliable lifetime requirement of 4 yr. The payback has been huge: Fixes have been successfully implemented and excellent performance is now being achieved with AECL improved RCP seals. In this paper, the CANDU RCP seal experience, the methodology (with emphasis on the station's role) for attaining reliable long RCP seal life, and the adaptability of this technology to US light water reactors (LWRs) are discussed