Aging management: Control of the knowledge data base

Aging management is part of the safety management system in NPP Neckarwestheim, Germany. The central goal of aging management is to increase knowledge about aging mechanisms acting on systems, structures and components (SSC), steadily. Comprehensive knowledge is a pre-requisite to guard against aging related systematic failures.To increase knowledge it is necessary to gather and evaluate data of different departments, systematically. While a nuclear power plant is in service numerous events may occur which are related to aging and may have an influence on the quality of SSC. Relevant events may be malfunction, maintenance results, operational experience, results of surveillance or events in other utilities. It is important to evaluate these events concerning the aspect of aging, regularly, and to decide which measures are required to prevent similar unexpected events in the future. In some cases the new experience has to be assigned to comparable SSC. These evaluations and the necessary measures as well as the tracking of their effectiveness are performed by an aging management team that meets every 3 months.The resulting knowledge data base (aging management data base) supports the application of the PDCA cycle and provides an overview and fast access to all quality documents related to each SSC including surveillance measures and results. It simplifies the generation of annual status reports which demonstrate the efficiency of aging management.Finally, the procedure can be extended to SSC which are important for the availability of the plant and thus take a step forward from aging management to plant life management.