Condition monitoring of electrical equipment in nuclear power plants

Condition monitoring (CM) is a subset of maintenance testing. It is a quantitative, predictive technique for assessing the effects of all types of aging (environmental, cyclic, operational, etc) on the ''health'' of the equipment. A difference between CM and maintenance testing is that the latter is neither quantitative (i.e., measures the relative condition of the component or material as opposed to merely verifying that its condition is acceptable) nor predictive (i.e., makes judgments, on the ability of the component to perform at a future time). A common example of the principle of CM can be illustrated with the automobile which has a lifetime that is small enough to observe all the periods (break in, random failure, wear out) that occur throughout aging. There are several weak link components in the car (e.g., water hoses, contacts in the distributor, generator, spark plug cables, solenoid, etc) which if they fail will cause failure of the automobile to either start or run. From the day the car is put on the road and is subjected to heat and vibration, significant aging of these components occurs. Degradation in the water hoses, for example is manifested by the elastomeric casing becoming brittle and cracking