Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems in Nuclear Power Plants

Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems in Nuclear Power Plants
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 126
Release: 1997-04-18
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0309175151
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The nuclear industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) have been working for several years on the development of an adequate process to guide the replacement of aging analog monitoring and control instrumentation in nuclear power plants with modern digital instrumentation without introducing off-setting safety problems. This book identifies criteria for the USNRC's review and acceptance of digital applications in nuclear power plants. It focuses on eight areas: software quality assurance, common-mode software failure potential, systems aspects of digital instrumentation and control technology, human factors and human-machine interfaces, safety and reliability assessment methods, dedication of commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software, the case-by-case licensing process, and the adequacy of technical infrastructure.

The Development of a Demonstration Passive System Reliability Assessment

The Development of a Demonstration Passive System Reliability Assessment
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:
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In this paper, the details of the development of a demonstration problem to assess the reliability of a passive safety system are presented. An advanced small modular reactor (advSMR) design, which is a pool-type sodium fast reactor (SFR) coupled with a passive reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS) is described. The RELAP5-3D models of the advSMR and RCCS that will be used to simulate a long-term station blackout (SBO) accident scenario are presented. Proposed benchmarking techniques for both the reactor and the RCCS are discussed, which includes utilization of experimental results from the Natural convection Shutdown heat removal Test Facility (NSTF) at the Argonne National Laboratory. Details of how mechanistic methods, specifically the Reliability Method for Passive Systems (RMPS) approach, will be utilized to determine passive system reliability are presented. The results of this mechanistic analysis will ultimately be compared to results from dynamic methods in future work. This work is part of an ongoing project at Argonne to demonstrate methodologies for assessing passive system reliability.