Advance: research project on aging electrical wiring in nuclear power plants

As Nuclear Power Plants get older it is more important to know the real condition of low voltage, instrumentation, power and control cables. Additionally, as new plants are being built, the election of cables and the use of in-situ monitoring techniques to get reliable aging indicators, can be very useful during the plant life. The goal of this Project is to adapt, optimize and asses Condition Monitoring techniques for Nuclear Power Plants cables. These techniques, together with the appropriate acceptance criteria, would allow specialists to know the state of the cable over its entire length and estimate its residual life. In the Project, accelerated ageing is used in cables installed in European NPPs in order to evaluate different techniques to detect local and global ageing. Results are compared with accepted tests to validate its use for the estimation of cables residual life. This paper describes the main stages of the Project and some results. (Author)