Operating Experience with Turbine Driven Pumps

The ability to keep the nuclear power plant safe for the duration of the blackout condition remains one of the fundamental characteristics of a safe NPP. Turbine driven pumps (TDP) are one of the most often used equipment in PWR and BWR NPPs to achieve this goal. The analysis of TDP related events reported to the International Reporting System (IRS) database in the last 20 years has been performed and combined with available systematic TDP US NRC trending analysis. Namely, the analysis using only international data would due to missed trends of lower level events not provide a complete picture on TDP operating experience leading to incomplete understanding of the topic. TDP failures predominantly reported to IRS are due to TDP control (governor) failure. These failures are only a small portion of failures that render safety systems using TDP inoperable implying that the safety focus should not be only on TDP as mechanically most complex equipment of TDP driven safety system but on the safety system/train as a whole.

MUEHLEISEN Artur; 

2013-06-02

Nuclear Society of Slovenia

JRC73671

0167-899X,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC73671,