The AREVA C3 concept. Customized chemical cleaning as an essential part of steam generator asset management

As the nuclear industry moves forward and the world's power demand increases, the continued safe, reliable, and efficient operation of existing plants has become indispensable. For these plants asset management is an essential factor. A crucial part of the plant assets are the steam generators (SG). Not only that the SG tubes are by far the largest boundary between the primary and secondary sides, they are also instrumental in the overall performance of the plant. The main concern for operational lifetime is tube degradation due to either ID or OD corrosion. At the secondary side, sludge and corrosion products accumulate in the SG resulting in the buildup of secondary side deposits. Such deposits can negatively affect the SG performance in different ways, not only by reduction of the heat transfer rates and, thus, by reducing the efficiency of the SG but also as cause or promotion of different types of corrosion phenomena. The cleanliness of the secondary side of SG is of essential interest to all utilities. There is not just one solution for SG asset optimization. The utilities must weigh the pros and cons of SG cleaning, with the associated impact on outage time and cost, versus the potential benefits. Each plant that considers a SG chemical cleaning has different objectives and goals. AREVA has developed the C3 (Customized Chemical Cleaning - or in short 'C cubed') concept in order to provide the utility with a chemical cleaning method that is tailored to the needs of the individual units and that addresses them directly. (orig.)