R&D on maintenance technologies for FBR plants in JAEA; The Status quo and the future plan

Tsukimori, Kazuyuki; Ueda, Masashi ; Miyahara, Shinya  ; Yamashita, Takuya

The new inspection system have been applied to nuclear power plants in Japan since 2008 in order to improve their safety and reliability during operation. The performance of maintenance activities are evaluated through PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Action) cycle and the utilization of the risk information, condition monitoring techniques, etc. is recommended in this system. Also, elongation of plant lives and high performance demands need the rationalization and sophistication of the maintenance program and technologies. Electric power companies owing LWRs already began to adopt advanced monitoring techniques, such as thermography, sampling of lubricants to check bearing integrity, etc. FBRs are under development but situation is as same as LWRs. However, unvisible and high temperature environments are added as the conditions that should be considered in developing advanced maintenance technologies, since the liquid metal coolant systems are adopted in many FBR plant designs. In this paper, the maintenance techniques now proceeding such as MONJU ISI equipments, and new promising monitoring systems, inspection techniques and repairing methods for the demonstration FBR are presented.