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Abstract:
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The nuclear power industry of the Federal Republic of Germany
has achieved consistently better reactor operating performance than
has the U.S. industry. Earlier work has suggested that a major
source of the difference is in capacity factor losses caused by
regulatory practices. An investigation of the problems attributed
to regulation in the United States, which caused losses from 1975 to
1984, was performed. Fifteen major issues were identified, which
comprised 85 percent of all regulatory losses. The performance of
the German industry then was analyzed to discover differences in
regulatory practices.
Most of the U.S. regulatory losses were found to be associated
with steam generators, reactor coolant systems, and containment
systems. The regulatory losses in the Federal Republic of Germany
included the retraining of a plant staff after an accident, a
long-term derating of a plant because of inadequate backup safety
systems, and several smaller problems. The German industry applies
inspection and repair standards for steam generators that equal or
exceed U.S regulations, and it treats these losses as part of normal
plant maintenance. However, the German industry also assigned the
largest single cause of capacity loss in BWRs--recirculation pipe
replacement--to the voluntary maintenance category because they
weren't strictly ordered to shut down, only pressured with the
threat of stringent inspection standards. When the BWR pipe
replacement outages were added to the Federal Republic of Germany's
total regulatory loss, and the steam generator losses were
subtracted from the U.S. total, the Federal Republic of Germany was
found to have greater regulatory losses. It can therefore be
concluded that the sources of poor U.S. performance relative to the
Federal Republic of Germany come from areas other than regulation. |
