Facilities life span

Firewater supply sources can be the city public water main, a dedicated storage tank and pumps, or the most convenient lake, river or if an offshore installation the open sea. Brackish or salt water supplies can be used if suitable corrosion protection measures are applied to the entire firewater system if it is planned to be used for an extended life (i.e., grater than five years). If a short life span of the facility is expected, short corrosion resistant materials may be used (i.e., carbon steel, galvanized steel, etc.), provided periodic testing indicates their integrity is still adequate and scale or corrosion particles do not affect operational efficiency. 

The traditional Hierarchical Star architecture is designed for maximum flexibility. Cross-connect facilities are provided in both the telecommunications closets and the main equipment room. The riser backbone cables can be sized with low counts which allow only distributed active equipment, or for greatest flexibility, with high counts which permit both distributed and centralized active equipment. The horizontal cross-connect facility helps ensure the greatest life span for the system by allowing the... 

The changing pattern of the availability of conventional petroleum has focused the attention of refiners on heavy feedstocks and their economic use is a necessity (Dickenson et al., 1997). The move to process these less desirable feedstocks has led to legislation to control the amount of sulfur in the various grades of liquid fuels. This, in turn, has meant that processing facilities must be adjusted accordingly to effectively remove the sulfur from the feedstocks (or products) as an integral part of the processing sequence. Furthermore, the lack of use of residua can also create environmental problems due to disposal issues or result in the production of low-quality asphalt that has limited life span in service. 

The size (generating capacity) of light-water nuclear power plants is usually twice that of their fossil counterparts or about 1.2 gW (1,200 mW). The plants life spans are in the range of 40 to 60 years, and their total cost includes not only construction and operation, but also waste disposal and decommissioning. Insurance costs can also be high because there have been cases when plants were not allowed to operate at all, for example, the ill-fated 5 billion Shoreham facility which was never allowed to operate. 

Within oil-field production, treating equipment is selected in a similar manner. As the amount of water produced will vary over the life span of an oil field, equipment is often added as needed to an oil-field treating facility. The design of existing facilities will allow the addition of equipment to occur with minimal disruption during periodic maintenance shutdowns (or turnarounds ) if proper consideration has been given to the potential of changing production fluids. 

Recommendation 12. The Chemical Materials Agency should implement a mechanism to coordinate and formally demand consensus in areas of information management where joint operations between the chemical agent stockpile incineration facilities are appropriate. Such mechanisms should be developed, implemented, and reinforced for the remaining life span of the chemical agent stockpile disposal program. (Tier 2)... 

The digital format in which information is stored was not verified directly, but the committee was informed that data are stored in a format that is recoverable in the long term. The available space in those facilities was reported to be substantial in terms of foreseeable requirements. Therefore, the issues of continuing operability that may arise from the physical facilities are not expected to be affected by the protracted life span of the chemical stockpile disposal program unless at some future point the available space is exhausted or requirements change. 

The electronic links between buildings within the facilities examined were found to be varied, and have been changing over the life span of the facilities. For example, at ANCDF, the older twinned facilitywide communications backbone loop has been replaced by a single fiber optic cable, whereas at TOCDF, the original system remains in place. 

Choose a preferred option as a base case, (2) Detennine the intended life span of the design facility. (3) Calculate the total installation cost (the capital cost) of the facility for each option which includes the equipment/accessories cost and installation cost. (4) Calculate the total operating cost over its life span for each option, which includes all the utility cost and minus product profit difference (if there is). Some of these costs are in the future. They can be converted to current cash value, if an inflation rate is estimated. (5) Add total installation cost and total operating cost for each option as the total cost over life span for each option. (6) Compare the total cost of each option. The one with the lowest total cost is the less expensive one. 

Half-lives span a very wide range (Table 17.5). Consider strontium-90, for which the half-life is 28 a. This nuclide is present in nuclear fallout, the fine dust that settles from clouds of airborne particles after the explosion of a nuclear bomb, and may also be present in the accidental release of radioactive materials into the air. Because it is chemically very similar to calcium, strontium may accompany that element through the environment and become incorporated into bones once there, it continues to emit radiation for many years. About 10 half-lives (for strontium-90, 280 a) must pass before the activity of a sample has fallen to 1/1000 of its initial value. Iodine-131, which was released in the accidental fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, has a half-life of only 8.05 d, but it accumulates in the thyroid gland. Several cases of thyroid cancer have been linked to iodine-131 exposure from the accident. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24 ka (24000 years). Consequently, very long term storage facilities are required for plutonium waste, and land contaminated with plutonium cannot be inhabited again for thousands of years without expensive remediation efforts. 

The management of radioactive waste is a function potentially spanning all stages in the life cycle of a facility. Guidance on the management of radioactive wastes is provided jointly by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Environment Agency (EA) (References 15.1 and 15.2). 

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