Development of prototype reactor maintenance, 3; Application to valves of sodium-cooled reactor prototype

Chikazawa, Yoshitaka  ; Takaya, Shigeru  ; Tagawa, Akihiro ; Kubo, Shigenobu 

A maintenance management required to prototype nuclear power reactors has been developed. One of important mission of a prototype reactor is to develop maintenance program for commercial reactors step by step securing safety. Since operating experience at the early stage is limited, the maintenance program for the prototype reactor should be a progressive one. It has to be modified and improved frequently taking into account R&D insight and operation experiences. Additionally, the maintenance program has to consider features of the prototype reactor even at the early stage. To select maintenance grades on particular components/systems, risk informed and graded approaches are effective. And maintenance programs have to take into account degradation mechanism originally due to reactor features. In this paper, applications for maintenance program on sodium valves of prototype fast breeder reactor Monju are studied as an example of prototype sodium-cooled reactors (SFR).