1. Do you perform specific Thermography routes prior to outage and following outages?

2. Do you have specific Thermo PMT requirements as a result of a specific maintenance?

3. When and do you shoot motor lead boxes?

Richard J. Woods ( Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant, Miami, FL)

ps-(W) 305-246-7205

I have had the pleasure of working as a contractor (looking for the $) as well as starting up a program in a plant now as the RE. Here is my 2 cents worth.

1. We perform IR on electrical systems at least once per a quarter. We are in a highly corrosive environment with salt dust and so forth. All exceptions that are noted have WO entered and then are followed up as part of the next months round.

2. Currently, we use an electrician since we do not have dedicated personnel. There are some inconsistency between each person. But, it is my goal to get a FT electrician for IR and millwright for vibration/oil. I have put together requirements for each position and, if you like, forward them to you.

3. All motor lead boxes are shot quarterly, from the outside. However, we do have 67-key motors that we try to get with motor current and IR quarterly of which we open the lead boxes. Once again, do to the environment.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your response,
My second question was primarily asking if you have any required thermography activities due to an activity being performed pre-outage, post-outage, or during the outage?

my email is as follows:
Richard_j_woods@fpl.com

Richard:
I work at a utility company and we have set routes for thermography at a frequency of 6 or 12 months depending on the criticality of the equipment. For instance transformers are shot every 6 months. At the beginning of our program, we started to take temperature readings on motors, but found that it was not feasable to do that because we have temperature probes that will let us know if there is excessive heat in the motors, so we found better use of our time (We still do occasional motor temperature if called for). We do however perform an IR scan on breakers and fuses and have found loose connections which has come to pay off in the long run. There are times that we have been called to look at switches in the switchyard also. We have also found other uses for the IR camera, such as a boiler walk down 3 months before an outage looking for degraded insulation and fuel pipe pluggage and some occasional pump,bearing, and/or coupling problems. Hope this helps.

Rafael

Richard,
I work at a Nuke, and have some idea of what you are talking about.
We have specific pre-outage tasks for monitoring of transformers, iso-phase bus ducts, etc...
Post outage we also have tasks to inspect the switchyard MOD's after we get to 100% power, as well as the transformers.
We do inspections of the switchyard every three months. We do all critical breakers, inverters, batteries, and load centers once a year, with the exception of extremely sensitive stuff like RCP breakers... can't open the doors at power.

We do thermography PMT's on any connection repair or replacement, and do PMT's on any work in inverter cabinets and EDG control cabinets.
We do not shoot motor lead boxes or motors except by special request.
Ed Hudson
ANO

Richard,

I ran the thermography program at a BWR for 10 years. What Ed says here is good. Additionally, there are some non-electrical applications for nuclear power that can be very beneficial. In PWRs, thermography has been successfully used to perform containment spray testing during outages, saving significant time by not having to contruct scaffolding and manually checking all the nozzles. In BWRs, condenser air inleakage can be tested during coastdown, typically at about 50% power, to find sources of air inleakage. Mark Lanius of Exelon wrote a paper published at Thermosense on evaluating steam system insulation to find thermal losses, as well as protecting equipment near steam piping that could be damaged by faulty insulation. Emergency battery testing is typically performed during outages, and this is the only time that thermography can really be effective to check the jars and connections for problems while under load. Certain fans and other support equipment only run during the outage, and some equipment is only accessible or tested during outages. It is a good practice to get with the ST/RT test coordinators and check to see what tests can be piggybacked to evaluate equipment that isn't otherwise running or accessible. Other outage-only equipment that comes to mind are turbine turning gear (check breakers), feedwater heater dump and relief valves (BWR), mechanical vacuum pump (offgas system in BWR), and containment equipment (PWR). Below is an image from a BWR condenser air-inleakage inspection, which can be highly effective at improving heat rate (i.e., big bucks).

There are a few papers on the topic posted on MRG White Papers website and an overview powerpoint on nuclear power applications on http://www.mrgcorp.com/white_papers.asp?aID=1037

Feel free to contact me to discuss, rwurzbach@mrgcorp.com

Rich Wurzbach
Maintenance Reliability Group, LLC

We use thermograpghy for MMC, hot eqpt/piping, refractories/insulation, reformer tubes & flue gas duct.

It appears the use of thermography is extensive. Any paper discussing all possible uses of thermograghy to industrial plants or facilities? TQ

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Josh,

How do you deal with safety concerns during thermography for switchboards etc?