The OECD Pipe Failure Data Exchange Project: Validation of Canadian Data

Structural integrity of piping systems is important to plant safety and operability. Information on degradation and failure of piping components and systems is collected and evaluated by regulatory agencies, international organizations (e.g., OECD/NEA and IAEA) and industry organizations worldwide to establish systematic feedback to reactor regulation and research and development programs associated with non-destructive examination (NDE) technology, in-service inspection (ISI) programs, leak-before-break evaluations, risk-informed ISI, and probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) applications involving passive component reliability. In 2002, the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has initiated an international pipe failure data collection and exchange project. The OECD Pipe Failure Data Exchange (OPDE) Project has been established to encourage multilateral co-operation in the collection and analysis of data relating to pipe failure events in commercial nuclear power plants. At present, the database contains 3644 records to which twelve participating countries contributed. This paper presents a brief description of the ODPE project objectives and work scope, as well as the Canadian contribution on data validation with respect to development and application of the pipe failure data collection on which OPDE is based. It gives a number of tables and figures that can be obtained from these records, with selected data ranging from a very broad (i.e. level of participation in the database from each member country), to very specific (i.e. plant operational state at time of pipe failure discovery for CANDU reactors).