State-of-Art and Maturity Overview of the Nuclear Industry on Predictive Maintenance

Abstract

In order to ensure as continuous as possible nuclear energy production, it is necessary to guarantee the availability of all equipment involved in the production chain, in all its complexity. The safety of all these equipments is based on a good command of the maintenance policy with very specific conditions related to the demanding regulations of the nuclear field. It is about having facilities that are safe, available with a good quality and a limitation to radiological risk. Today, with the advancement of digital technology, substantial improvements have occurred in the tools that can be applied in the maintenance and monitoring of Structures, Systems and Components (SSCs), enabling an understanding of equipment performance far beyond that available only a few decades ago. Therefore, predictive maintenance becomes a subject of prior interest for the nuclear industry. In this paper, we will emphasize the incentives and obstacles of predictive maintenance deployment in a nuclear context. The objectives here are to draw a clear picture of what can be the practices of predictive maintenance in the nuclear industry context and to identify the requirements and the needs to implement a predictive maintenance model on the lifecycle management of a nuclear facility.