Aging management through condition monitoring of ASCo solenoid valves and NAMCO limit switches

Faced with increasing deregulation in the power industry, competition from independent power producers (IPPs) and aging nuclear power plants, utilities are looking at ways to cut their generation costs to remain competitive. Besides the capital and fuel costs that are fixed, utilities are burdened with the ever escalating operation and maintenance costs and are studying means to control aging of their plants and improve plant performance. This paper presents methods for reducing periodic replacement costs for 2 types of equipment. These methods predict and control aging through baseline material characteristic/performance criteria and periodic condition monitoring. The equipment to which these methods are applied have numerous applications in the plant. The methodologies presented herein can be extended to cover all safety and risk significant components in the plant that are either important to plant safety and operation and/or are expensive to replace