Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Study of common cause failures. Phase I: a classification system

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5281365

The objectives of the Phase I study were (1) to provide a suitable definition of CCF with respect to the different classes of common cause failure (CCF) events, and (2) to demonstrate that CCF data can be extracted from event reports in a consistent and reproducible way. The solution was to provide an Event Classification System whereby any component unavailability may be placed into one of the following six classes: independent failure (IF), cascade failure (CF), functional unavailability (FU), conditionally independent failures (CIF), multiple cascade failures (MCF), and multiple functional unavailabilities (MFU). The viability of the proposed Event Classification System was assessed using a Data Benchmark Test involving seven participants. The results were very encouraging. It was concluded that the proposed Event Classification System represents a major step toward clear, consistent event analysis and communication. 77 references.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos Technical Associates, Inc., NM (USA)
OSTI ID:
5281365
Report Number(s):
EPRI-NP-3383; ON: DE84920282
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English