Probabilistic safety assessment for digital instrumentation and control systems in nuclear power plants - a review

Deregulation in electricity market has created a great deal of challenges for nuclear power industries [1]. To stay competitive, Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) will have to find ways to reduce their operational costs and to improve the plant safety. Instrumentation and Control (I and C) systems play an important role in this regard. Thus, new methodologies need to be developed to manage the operation of I and C systems more economically without jeopardizing the overall plant safety. Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) technique is one of the promising methods to deal with such an issue, because PSA analyzes various system operational issues from a probabilistic sense, rather than a worst-case approach. However, there are several limitations when PSA is applied to I and C systems directly. A possible solution to this problem can be found by incorporating PSA with several other approaches. To better understand the issues involved, an attempt has been made in this paper to carry out a literature survey on this and related subject, particularly the effort will be made on: 1) the development of digital I and C systems in NPP, 2) PSA and its potential benefits and limitations, and 3) applications of PSA in various aspects of I and C systems including the resource allocation, the determination of surveillance testing strategies and the design of I and C systems. Finally, some solutions to overcome the aforementioned obstacles when applying PSA in I and C systems are also examined critically. (author)