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A semi-Markov reliability analysis of alternating systems

Conference · · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (USA)
OSTI ID:6387203
Current nuclear power plants must be highly reliable with respect to safety and economy. Consequently, development of a new safety evaluation methodology is desired for the accurate evaluation of safety and economy. A nuclear power plant consists of many systems. This paper is concerned with the reliability evaluation of alternating systems. An alternating system usually consists of multitrains, and its operation alternates from one train to another. Examples of these are the nuclear service cooling water system, the component cooling water system, and the chemical and volume control system. The alternating systems exhibit strong dynamic time-dependent reliability characteristics because of the alternating operational mode and the technical specification requirements that are particularly difficult to analyze by static fault-tree techniques. The method used in this paper is based on the semi-Markov reliability analysis. The system performance measures evaluated are its contribution to the total risk of the plant (e.g., core damage probability) and to plant unavailability (reactor downtime). It is concluded that the methodology developed in this study can be applied to existing alternating systems for plant-specific evaluation of the various alternatives in technical specifications.
OSTI ID:
6387203
Report Number(s):
CONF-891103--
Conference Information:
Journal Name: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (USA) Journal Volume: 60
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English