River Bend looks to large pay-offs from its Reliability Centered programme [reactor maintenance]

The Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) programme at the US River Bend BWR station is the cornerstone of a general programme to hold operation and maintenance (O and M) costs in line while maintaining safety and reliability. The programme combines the Important-to-Reliability, Predictive Maintenance, Preventive Maintenance Review, and System Engineering programmes into one system, which also aims to reduce scrams, reduce regulatory surveillance and help engineers to be more cognizant of their system's status. While it appears that the Reliability Centered Maintenance programme itself is the centre of all this activity (see diagram), the system engineer is the real focus of the entire programme. The RCM programme serves as an information network routing plant data to and from the system engineer in a concise format for use in evaluating plant performance, adequacy of maintenance and the need for modifications to systems and components. (author)