NEA CODAP Project Topical Report on Basic Principles of Collecting and Evaluating Operating Experience Data on Metallic Passive Components

Several NEA member countries have agreed to establish the Component Operational Experience, Degradation and Ageing Programme (CODAP) to encourage multilateral co-operation in the collection and analysis of data relating to degradation and failure of metallic piping and non-piping metallic passive components in commercial nuclear power plants. The scope of the data collection includes service-induced wall thinning, part through-wall cracks, through-wall cracks with and without active leakage, and instances of significant degradation of metallic passive components, including piping pressure boundary integrity.

This fifth CODAP topical report focuses on the CODAP event database structure and the underlying principles of collecting operating experience data on metallic passive components. The report represents a summary of the CODAP Operating Procedures, the CODAP Event Database Coding Guideline, and the CODAP Applications Handbook. This report documents the CODAP Event Database structure and the underlying technical considerations to achieve high data quality as well as database comprehensiveness. Specifically, the report responds to the following frequently asked questions:

• How is the quality of the data in the event database controlled and monitored?
• What is the level of database completeness and comprehensiveness?
• What are the guiding principles of how the database is populated with failure event information?
• Does the database support applications (or, what is its fitness-for-use)?

The report describes the methods to add event data, the internal quality review methods of data and gives an overview on the number and nature of events in the database. Providing support for different applications is a continuous target of the CODAP database development.