Recently, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) gave the approval for Standards on the Maintenance and Reliability Appraisal for Building and Structure at NPPs (GB/T51323-2018), which will be in effect from on 1 March 2019.

The Standards was developed under the joint effort of NSC and Central Research Institute of Building and Construction Co., Ltd in collaboration with other 15 cooperative partners within the same industrial sector. It was based completely on the practices of reliability appraisal in the field of construction industry in combination with learning and absorbing experiences from domestic and international peers.

China’s NPPs are characterized with different reactor types imported from various countries and coexistence of multiple technologies complying with wide varieties of standards. As such, the Standards Writing Group, in the collaboration with several domestic design institutions, completed the development of the Standards with full consideration taken of both the current status of domestic nuclear power and the advices from various cooperative parties.

By taking full advantage of the information in Seismic Analysis and Evaluation of Nuclear Island Building Structures in sub-task of Project CN3.01/15 Phase 2, NSC received many valuable advices presented by European experts on revising the Standards. The Standards has been undergoing continuous improvement during discussions with the European experts.

The draft Standards, after its first completion, was circulated to the operators of nuclear power and civil construction engineering design institutions to solicit wide comments. In turn, the draft Standards was revised timely with full account taken of the solicited comments.

With the operational nuclear power plants continuing to expand in the country, issuing such a Standards will not only fill the gap in the national standard system on the maintenance and reliability appraisal of NPP’s buildings and structures but also has a significant and long term implication for ensuring the periodic NPP safety review and for extending operational license validity period.