TVA's Nuclear Power Group Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance (PM) is important to the reliable operation of assets. As a result of recent issues with nuclear performance, the OIG conducted a review of Nuclear Power Group's (NPG) PM program. The objective of this review was to determine if nuclear plant PM had been performed in accordance with established schedules, and if not, what effect the deviations were having.We found that reported PM metrics may not be accurate. During our review, we identified several concerns that raised questions about the validity of reported PM metrics. For calendar year 2012, auditors were provided two sets of PM metrics for each site. There were differences in the data sets and some of the differences were significant. Additionally, the three plants were not consistently using the "Counts as Deferral" flag in Maximo, thus preventing certain deferrals from being identified and considered for the deferral count. Also, we found there was inconsistency in how the late PM metric was reported. These issues will impact the value of the NPG Equipment Reliability Index (ERI), which is part of NPG's winning performance scorecard for fiscal year (FY) 2013. We also found that deviations from the PM schedules were negatively affecting system and component health. While PM program health has historically been rated poorly, there has been recent improvement. TVA started a PM optimization (PMO) program to bring its PM program in line with industry standards. Due to slow progress at all three plants, escalations were filed to raise this concern to a higher level.We recommended the Executive Vice President and Chief Generation Officer, Generation, take steps to (1) define methods for consistent and accurate reporting of PM metrics across the nuclear fleet, including a step for verification and retention of documentation for items manually excluded; (2) address the issue with the "Counts as Deferral" flag used in PM tracking; (3) perform an analysis to determine what impact inaccurate PM data could have on the Equipment Reliability Index calculation for fiscal year 2013 winning performance measures; (4) reduce deviations from the PM schedules; (5) take necessary actions to prevent recurring PMO implementation problems resulting from lack of site support; and (6) expedite PMO efforts. TVA management agreed our recommendations.