Analysis of maintenance strategies

The most nuclear power utilities have established goals and objectives for their nuclear power plants, including e.g. 1) operating the plant effectively from primarily the safety and secondly the economic point of view, 2) ensuring safety of the public and the plant workers, and 3) providing uninterrupted electric power to the shareholders with long-term minimum cost. The maintenance goals should reflect these goals at a more functional level. In a larger perspective, the goal of the plant maintenance and op-erability activities may be assurance of long-term asset management by keeping the plant continuously in a good condition like new (Mokka 1996). Avoiding faults causing plant disturbances during the operating period may be the most important performance goal which should not be put in danger by minimis-ing the number of maintenance work during the annual maintenance and refuelling outage. More detailed goals and objectives may be to carry out the necessary work at the optimal time during the outages or operation, and to minimise the unavailability time of safety related equipment. One internal objective may be to carry out the maintenance work at budgeted cost. It is expected that every maintenance organisation will, together with its parent organisation, identify its own goals and objectives (EURO-MAINE 1997).