Aging Management Program of Large Diameter Safety Class Piping

Ageing management of Nuclear Power Plants is an essential issue for utilities, in term of safety and availability and corresponding economical consequences. Practically all nuclear countries have developed a systematic program to deal with ageing of components on their plants. This paper presents the ageing management program developed by EDF (Electricite´ de France) that are compared with different approaches in other countries, like IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)guidelines and GALL (Generic Ageing Lessons Learned) report. The paper presents an example of application to large diameter safety class piping. Different degradation mechanisms are considered fatigue, corrosion and thermal ageing. Maintenance and surveillance actions are also discussed in the paper.