| Abstract: | Over recent years the electric power generating community has acknowledged the importance of the aging process on plant safety and availability. To cope with time-dependent degradation phenomena that can affect active as well as passive components and lead to unacceptable, unanticipated failures requires research into the mechanisms of the aging process, advances in predictive methods for assessing the aging impact on risk and availability, and a better understanding of power plant operations so that strategies for defending against this pervasive stress can be developed. This paper discusses current research advances and presents a framework to aid in the systematic integration of these three needs. It also discusses current research in the aging effect on electric components. As such it is anchored to research being conducted at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the areas of plant aging, life extension, reliability, performance indication, and risk assessment. |
