The analysis of the reliability and availability of power plants is frequently based on simple indexes that do not take into account the criticality of some failures used for availability analysis. This criticality should be evaluated based on concepts of reliability which consider the effect of a component failure on the performance of the entire plant. System reliability analysis tools provide a root-cause analysis leading to the improvement of the plant maintenance plan.

Taking in view that the power plant performance can be evaluated not only based on thermodynamic related indexes, such as heat-rate, Thermal Power Plant Performance Analysis focuses on the presentation of reliability-based tools used to define performance of complex systems and introduces the basic concepts of reliability, maintainability and risk analysis aiming at their application as tools for power plant performance improvement, including:

· selection of critical equipment and components,

· definition of maintenance plans, mainly for auxiliary systems, and

· execution of decision analysis based on risk concepts.

The comprehensive presentation of each analysis allows future application of the methodology making Thermal Power Plant Performance Analysis a key resource forundergraduate and postgraduate students in mechanical and nuclear engineering.