Database for assessing the life expectancy of pressure-retaining components in nuclear power plants

In order to extend the service life of nuclear power plants (NPPs) it is es sential to guarantee the integrity of components both during operation and in the event of system disturbances. The integrity of components is guarant eed by: components of a sufficiently high manufacturing quality, appropriat e operational monitoring of loads and the damage mechanisms resulting from this, and the correct selection of the locations at which recurrent inspect ions should be provided. All these data are merged continuously (parallel t o operation) with the maintenance data in a database so that current inform ation on the state of the individual components in the power plant is alway s available, thus supplying reliable values for the extrapolation of servic e life expectation in the future operation. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.