Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

195
In April 1986, INPO issued its initial periodic Industrywide
Nuclear Power Plant Performance Indicator Report representing
data reported by member utilities. The report reflects industry
results through calendar year 1985 and presents those results in
a manner that allows comparison of a specific utility's
performance with that of the industry as a whole. Among the
indicators in the report are the following:
o equivalent availability factor
o safety system unavailability
o unplanned automatic scrams while critical
o unplanned safety system actuations
o forced outage rate
o thermal performance
o fuel reliability
o collective radiation exposure
o volume of low-level solid radioactive waste
o industrial safety lost-time accident rate
The remaining indicators in the report reflect performance in
specific areas such as maintenance, chemistry, and radiation
protection. Data on these indicators are provided to utilities
as management tools for assessing performance.
Attached to this testimony is a folder entitled Performance
Indicators for the U.S. Nuclear Utility Industry , dated June
1986. This shows utility industry performance results for the
overall indicators for the years 1980-1985. As can be seen from
a review of the graphs, improving trends are evident in a number
of areas including the following:
o The number of unplanned automatic reactor scrams while the
reactor was critical has declined by more than 41 percent
since 1980, from an estimated 7.4 per unit down to 4.3 per
unit in 1985.
o The number of significant events per unit (identified
through the INPO Events Analysis Program) at U.S. operating
nuclear plants has declined over 67 percent since 1981, from
1.64 to 0.53 in 1985.
o Forced outage rates reflect the percentage of time units are
off-line on short notice because of equipment failures or
other conditions. This outage rate has dropped more than 26
percent since 1982, down from 16.1 percent per unit to 11.9
percent per unit in 1985.
o Equivalent availability is the ratio of the total power a
unit could have produced, considering actual equipment and
regulatory limits, to its rated capacity expressed as a
percentage. Equivalent availability has risen from 59.8
percent in 1980 to 63.5 percent in 1985.
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