Nuclear Instrumentation & Control Modernization Strategy and Business Case
ScottMadden experts routinely perform deep industry and enterprise research and create business cases to identify likely outcomes and justify the capital investment plans of utilities and uncover opportunities for cost savings, efficiency improvements, operational excellence, and more.
At a Glance
Long-Term Investment Planning
Developed a business case to support fleet-wide modernization strategy, balancing asset reliability and modernization with shrinking vendor support and increases in cost and complexity
Risk-informed Prioritization Framework
Developed a framework to rank priorities for upgrade and modernization based on risk of action or inaction, readiness, and cost
Significant Projected Cost Savings
Analysis revealed opportunity for $1-2M in cost savings following I&C equipment modernization program, while improving reliability and reducing outage risk
Challenge
Many nuclear fleets are facing increasing reliability, obsolescence, and life cycle cost risks associated with aging analog instrumentation and control (I&C) systems. Utilities must balance long-term asset reliability, operational efficiency, cybersecurity modernization, and license extension objectives while managing escalating maintenance costs and shrinking vendor support. ScottMadden partnered with Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and a major U.S. nuclear utility to evaluate a fleet-scale digital I&C modernization strategy for a dual-unit pressurized water reactor site and develop a business case to support long-term investment planning.
Process
- Partnered with INL, engineering, operations, maintenance, and site leadership teams to assess safety-related and non-safety-related I&C modernization opportunities
- Evaluated more than 20 major I&C subsystems for reliability risk, obsolescence exposure, workload burden, and modernization sequencing priorities
- Analyzed more than 96,000 work management and maintenance records to quantify corrective maintenance trends, preventive maintenance workload, labor demand, and material expenditures associated with legacy analog systems
- Developed a phased modernization roadmap aligned to outage schedules, long-range planning, digital infrastructure migration, and control room modernization objectives
- Built a strategic business case, evaluating labor optimization, avoided obsolescence costs, inventory reduction, reliability improvements, and generation risk mitigation across multiple implementation scenarios
Result
- Identified approximately $2–$3 million in recurring annual O&M savings opportunities through reduced maintenance burden, material spend, overtime, and support activities
- Quantified approximately $700,000 in annual avoided material expenditures tied to obsolete I&C components, with critical component cost-escalation rates exceeding 13% –18% annually
- Established a risk-informed modernization prioritization framework enabling leadership to sequence investments based on reliability, operational impact, outage integration, and business value
- Demonstrated that avoided generation loss from major I&C reliability events can materially improve modernization economics and accelerate investment justification
- Developed an actionable modernization roadmap supporting license extension, operational resilience, workforce sustainability, and future digital operations initiatives
- Positioned the utility to enable future integrated operations capabilities, including condition-based monitoring, automated work management, advanced diagnostics, and AI-enabled operational support
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