Managing ageing and remaining lifetime of an industrial facility is a concern that must be taken in account by utility as soon as possible in daily activities. The corresponding actions engaged in France are based on 3 major step that are described in the paper: • routine maintenance, • exceptional maintenance, • systematic and periodic review of safety important components and structures sensitive to ageing to assure the effectiveness of the maintenance actions and maintain a high safety level of the plant with a good competitiveness. Following different on-going programs on ageing management of different components, EDF developed its own approach, based on IAEA guidelines, in order to systematically review all the ageing management programs implemented on its 3-loop plants. The methodology is done in 3 steps: • selection of components and justification, • degradation mechanism analysis, • synthesis and consequences on maintenance programs. After a presentation of each step of the procedure a quick overview of the status of application in France is done. Comparison of the methodology with similar methodology used in different other countries is done to close the paper.
