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Bruce Power owns eight of Canada’s 18 nuclear power reactors – six in operation and two scheduled for re-start in 2010 - and produces more than 4,700 megawatts, or roughly one-third of Canada’s nuclear power. The Bruce site is the largest nuclear power station in North America and the second largest in the world, next to Japan.
Challenges
The nuclear power industry is struggling to balance rapidly increasing demand with the costs and safety measures required to support an aging equipment base. Bruce Power identified scheduled maintenance activities as a source for efficiency gains enabling increased availability. Specifically, the company had more scheduled maintenance activities than capacity for timely execution.
Why?
Using Meridium, Bruce Power was able to identify and implement, on a continuous basis, maintenance related work process improvements to increase availability, while continuing to meet the company’s high safety standards.
Solution
Using Meridium, the company uses a risk-based approach for the identification of optimal maintenance intervals for its equipment assets. Coined the Master Strategy of the Company’s Technical Basis (CMMS), Meridium: - Accepts the company’s:
- Historical asset health data (MTBF, MTTR, Pareto and failure analysis)
- Maintenance performance data (inspection, calibration, test results)
- Current asset health data (operator rounds, Smart Signal, OSI pi, on-line monitoring, CBM)
- Identifies maintenance inefficiencies (wasted dollars); and
- Readjusts the company’s maintenance strategy based on identified areas for efficiency gains (saves dollars).
Results
Bruce Power has found that through a continuous regime of identifying maintenance related work process improvement opportunities using Meridium they can: - Increase the life of their existing assets
- Improve plant reliability and availability
- Increase the amount of power pumped into the grid
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