Overdue Pressure Safety Valve Maintenance Reduction Program

Abstract

In 2004 the preventive maintenance backlog was over 220 Pressure Safety Valve’s (PSVs) overdue, when Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) at the Chalk River Laboratories site first took action to reduce this backlog. Over two years, the PSV overdue backlog was reduced to about 25 valves. At fiscal year end 2006, AECL had 154 PSVs reported as overdue from the Preventive Maintenance (PM) as they were not tested within their service frequency. The number of PSVs reporting overdue was increasing and the service groups tasked to perform the on-time maintenance lost oversight of the regulatory compliance requirement for the PSV program. To resolve this issue, an action plan with dedicated resources was established in early 2007 to address the overdue PSVs preventive maintenance as well as to reassess the entire preventive maintenance program associated with the PSVs.