Thermal Aging
Nuclear plants are designed and licensed to operate for a certain period of time. In order to meet these licensing requirements, the equipment used in the plants must show that they will operate correctly for the same period of time. In order to do this, equipment is often artificially aged through “Thermal Aging”.
This is achieved by identifying the “activation energy” of components in the equipment, then using the Arrhnius Equation (Ea = -RT ln (K/A)) to calculate the temperature and length of time the equipment should be “cooked” at to simulate aging. Thus thirty or forty years can be simulated by mere weeks in an oven. At the end of the thermal aging process the equipment is removed and tested to make sure that it still operates within spec.
Amidyne performs these tests to the American QA program 10CFR50 Appendix B, or to the applicable Canadian QA programs (CSA CAN Z299.2, applicable parts of N286.1 and N286.2, and applicable parts of ISO 17025)
Definitions:
Thermal
Aging
Exposure to a thermal
condition or programmed series of conditions for preset periods of time
