Plant Integrity Management
We help our customers to get the best return on their investment in plant. We do this by helping them to extend plant life safely, focus inspection and maintenance strategies, and demonstrate regulatory compliance. We achieve this by bringing together world class structural integrity, Non Destructive Testing (NDT) and software capabilities to provide targeted solutions.
Whether the plant is at the design stage or in operation, we can help to demonstrate its fitness-for-purpose by performing:
- Design code assessments
- Stress and fatigue analyses
- Fracture assessments
- Remnant life assessments
Our Non Destructive Testing techniques can be used to collect essential data. Since it is important that inspections and maintenance are focused on those areas which are critical to the safe and economic continued operation of the plant, we help by:
- Identifying defects of concern
- Designing appropriate NDT techniques
- Using risk-informed methodologies to focus inspection and maintenance on those areas of plant most likely to degrade during operation
- Acting as an independent qualification body to demonstrate that inspection and maintenance are fit for intended purpose.
Where existing maintenance programmes are based upon design rules rather than operational history, we can design and install life management systems that calculate actual damage to plant and predict maintenance requirements on that basis. This has the dual benefit of extending operating intervals and reducing operating expenditure.
In particular, we carry out work to support the safety and life extension to the operating UK power producing AGR and Magnox nuclear power stations. Our calculations:
- Predict stresses in graphite core components
- Predict fracture and crack propagation
- Assess core geometry using finite element methods.
The material property variations of the graphite due to irradiation and temperature changes required for these calculations are obtained from our mathematical models, which have been developed for all the major graphite types. We also assess the performance of irradiated graphite components in other reactor types, such as PBMR, RBMKs, and the early plutonium production reactors.