4.0 Summary of Major Review Topics, DCISC 15th Annual Report - July 1, 2004 thru June 30, 2005
4.13 Equipment Reliability and Life Cycle Management
4.13.1 Overview and Previous Activities
Aging-related degradation is the gradual degradation in the physical characteristics of a system, structure, or component (SSC) which occurs over time and use, and which could impair the ability to perform its design functions. The purpose of the Aging Management Program (AMP) is to ensure that the plant continues to operate safely and within its design and licensing bases throughout its life through the process of involving engineering, operations, and maintenance in activities to control age-related degradations or failures of SSCs to within acceptable limits.
The PG&E AMP includes a number of existing programs such as the steam generator strategic plan, reactor pressure vessel embrittlement program, Erosion/Corrosion program, intake structure concrete inspection activities, electrical cable aging, buried commodities, and concrete/steel structures, to name a few. The scope of the systems, structures and components to be covered by the program continues to evolve and expand.
In 1998 the Aging Management Program was transferred from San Francisco to the station Steam Generator Engineering Group. More reliance was being placed on support from EPRI, DOE Guidelines, and Westinghouse Owners’ Group (WOG) Life Cycle Management (LCM) and License Renewal (LR) programs.
As a part of Aging Management, the plant has developed System Long Term Plans (SLTP) which specify needs and actions for systems for the next five years. The DCISC Team reviews and reports on the SLTPs when it reviews a system with the System Engineer at most Fact-finding meetings.
The DCISC reviewed the following aging management-related and equipment reliability items during the previous reporting period:
- Status of Life Cycle Management Program and Equipment Reliability
- Status of Plans to Improve Equipment Reliability
- NSOC Equipment Reliability Subcommittee Report
The DCISC concluded that PG&E has taken aggressive and appropriate actions to recover its equipment reliability.
4.13.2 Current Period Activities
During the current reporting period, the following equipment reliability related items were reviewed:
- Equipment Reliability Process Update
- NSOC Equipment Reliability Subcommittee Report
- Equipment Reliability Program Health
Equipment Reliability Process Update
In April 2005 the Fact-finding Team met with the Equipment Reliability (ER) Program Owner and member of the NSOC ER Subcommittee, to review the progress being made in the ER area (Volume II, Exhibit D.9, Section 3.3). Equipment failures during outages and coming out of outages are affecting outage duration. The plant has run well from breaker to breaker, but problems have occurred during and coming out of the outages.
DCPP has developed a Diablo Canyon 2005 Performance Plan, Objective 3, Outage Equipment Failures Action Plan to address these problems. The objective is to understand the common causes for equipment failures preventing DCPP from exiting refueling outages on time and to determine corrective actions. Milestones were to 1) determine common causes by 4/1/05 (complete) and 2) determine appropriate corrective actions by 6/1/05.
For the first milestone, five Common Causes were developed by the Expert Panel using INPO’s ER “Bubble Chart”, as well as an independent CAP analysis of the significant outage equipment failure events.
The second milestone is ongoing. A team is being established for each common cause. DCPP believes that completion of the action plans should lead to improved equipment performance coming out of outage 1R13 and future outages. To sustain outage performance, they plan to perform a “Bubble Chart” exercise following each future outage to verify correction action effectiveness and continue to identify areas for improvement.
DCPP believes they are behind the industry in completing the Preventative Maintenance Optimization (PMO) Program. The program is taking more time and resources than planned. The PMO looks at the most important systems to be sure that the correct PM is being performed on the critical equipment. DCPP has completed 47 systems for identifying critical equipment. They are now in the process of reviewing existing PMs to determine if the correct PM is being performed on the equipment. The goal was to complete this in 2009, but there does not seem to be enough money in the budget to complete on time. They are planning to use a consulting firm to help meet the 2009 goal and will need to increase budget.
It appears that DCPP is taking appropriate corrective actions to improve equipment performance during and coming out of outages, but still have a long way to go to complete the Preventative Maintenance Optimization program and update the Preventative Maintenance Program. DCPP continues to have long-term equipment problems that need to be resolved.
NSOC Equipment Reliability Subcommittee
To assure equipment reliability gets high-level attention PG&E has established a dedicated Equipment Reliability Subcommittee in its Nuclear Safety and Oversight Committee (NSOC) which has been reviewing the following equipment reliability-related items:
- DCPP internalizing lessons learned from INPO SOER 2002-4 (Davis Besse)
- Managing DCPP’s “Engineering Programs” for the long term
- INPO Topical Report TR4-37 titled “Causes of Significant Outages Impacts During Unit Restoration and Start-Up” (June 2004)
- Equipment reliability “bubble chart” exercise results
- Progress of Equipment Failure Trending – DCPP has a positive trend
- Ability to ensure appropriate knowledge (including knowledge transfer in the area of electrical and electronics expertise for the Engineering, Maintenance and Quality Verification organizations) is maintained to ensure future sustained performance
- INPO Mid-Cycle Assessment
- Critical Equipment Classification, Performance Monitoring, Apparent Cause Analysis for critical failures and Long Term Planning
- Outage and Post-Outage Equipment Events from 2R11, 1R12 and 2R12
- 2005 Equipment Reliability Improvement Initiatives
- Ability and willingness of the Asset Teams to take on new PM’s that result from ER initiatives, specifically PMO’s and LCM Studies
- Effectiveness of the Troubleshooting (TS) Process
- INPO AFI regarding Long Standing Equipment Problems
- DCPP Performance Plan regarding Refueling Outage impacts resulting from equipment failures
- Results from the QA Assessment on Engineering Programs
- Need for dedicated Heat Exchanger Program Owner
The NSOC ER Subcommittee (SC) reported at the April 27, 2005 NSOC meeting that all of the actions identified in the DCPP Equipment Reliability Improvement Plan (ERIP) were completed, as scheduled.
Equipment Reliability Program Health
Through June 2005, Equipment Reliability Program Health performance indicator was Yellow because for the first quarter 2005 the forced loss rate (FLR) for Unit 1 was 1.65, exceeding DCPP 2005 Performance Plan Goal of @lt;0.80. Unit 2 was 0.13. The Reliability Engineering Group is implementing actions necessary to restore the White and Yellow elements to Green. DCPP expects ER Program health to return to White by October 1, 2006 with the completion of planned PMOs and LCMs with each unit FLR @lt;0.80 and Critical Clock Reset 12-Month Total @lt;12 resets.
The ER Program Health outlier element is PM Implementation which is currently Yellow. The NSOC ERSC noted that one of the reasons ER Program Health is Yellow is due to the lack of implementation of necessary PMs for critical equipment and made recommendations to NSOC to correct this. DCPP expects the needed 35 PMO evaluations to complete in 2008.
It appears Equipment Reliability is getting the appropriate level of attention from management through the NSOC Equipment Reliability Subcommittee.
4.13.3 Conclusions and Recommendations
- Conclusion:
- PG&E has taken aggressive and wide-reaching actions to improve its equipment reliability. The DCISC will continue to follow PG&E’s progress and results with its equipment reliability.
- Recommendations:
- None