An Integrated Risk Assessment Process of Safety-Related Digital I&C Systems in Nuclear Power Plants
- Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- University of Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
- Technology Resources, Dana Point, CA (United States)
Upgrading the existing analog instrumentation and control (I&C) systems to state-of-the-art digital I&C (DI&C) systems will greatly benefit existing light water reactors. However, the issue of software common cause failure (CCF) remains an obstacle in terms of qualification for digital technologies. Existing analyses of CCFs in I&C systems mainly focus on hardware failures. With the application and upgrading of new DI&C systems, design flaws could cause software CCFs to become a potential threat to plant safety, considering that most redundancy designs use similar digital platforms or software in their operating and application systems. With complex multilayer redundancy designs to meet the single failure criterion, these I&C safety systems are of particular concern in U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing procedures. In Fiscal Year 2019, the Risk-Informed Systems Analysis (RISA) Pathway of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program initiated a project to develop a risk assessment strategy for delivering a strong technical basis to support effective, licensable, and secure DI&C technologies for digital upgrades and designs. An integrated risk assessment for the DI&C process was proposed for this strategy to identify potential key digital-induced failures, implement reliability analyses of related digital safety I&C systems, and evaluate the unanalyzed sequences introduced by these failures (particularly software CCFs) at the plant level. Here this paper summarizes these RISA efforts in the risk analysis of safety-related DI&C systems at Idaho National Laboratory.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1974871
- Report Number(s):
- INL/JOU-21-65396-Revision-0
- Journal Information:
- Nuclear Technology, Journal Name: Nuclear Technology Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 209; ISSN 0029-5450
- Publisher:
- Taylor & FrancisCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Quantitative Risk Analysis of High Safety Significant Safety-related Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems in Nuclear Power Plants using IRADIC Technology
Risk Analysis of Various Design Architectures for High Safety-significant Safety-related Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems of Nuclear Power Plants during Accident Scenarios