Trends and Patterns in Maintenance Performance in the U.S. Nuclear Power Industry: 1980-1985.

摘要

The report presents an analysis of maintenance performance in the U.S. nuclear power industry for the years 1980 through 1985. Using data derived from publicly available NRC sources, the analysis focuses on five performance categories that are directly influenced by the maintenance function. Trends over the six-year period are explored and performance differences are identified for BWR-PWR groups and for various categories of plant age (plants commercial prior to 1970, from 1970 to 1974, from 1975 to 1980, and 1980 or later) and size (plants with 599 MWe or less, 600 to 799 MWe, 800 to 999 MWe, and 1000 MWe or greater). The overall conclusions of this analysis are that (1) maintenance as a cause of plant problems may be becoming relatively more important, (2) average maintenance performance for the industry is improving along a number of important dimensions, and (3) this overall industry improvement can be attributed to improved maintenance performance in newer and larger plants. These newer and larger plants generally had poorer performance than the older and smaller plants for any given year, but have experienced the greatest relative improvement in their performance from 1980 to 1985. The older and smaller plants, on the other hand, generally had the best performance across the five categories, however, their level of performance between 1980 and 1985 remained relatively constant.