Application of Risk-Informed Inservice Inspection for Piping in Nuclear Power Plants

리스크 정보를 활용한 배관 가동중검사 적용

Pressurized Water Reactor Owners Group(PWROG) proposed and applied a risk-informed inservice inspection(RI-ISI) program to alternate existing ASME Section XI periodic inspections. The RI-ISI programs enhance overall safety by focusing inspections of piping at high safety significant(HSS) and locations where failure mechanisms are likely to be present, and by improving the effectiveness on inspection of components because the examination methods are based on the postulated failure mode and the configuration of the piping structural element. The RI-ISI programs can reduce NDE, man-rem exposure, costs of engineering analysis, outage duration and chance of complicating plant operations etc. RI-ISI methods of piping inservice inspection were applied on 3 units(KSNP : Korea Standard Nuclear Power Plant) and are scheduled to apply on the other units. In this paper, we compared and showed the results of the 2 units and we concluded that the RI-ISI application could enhance and maintain plant safety and give unquantifiable benefits.