Quality assurance in managing a cable route database

Errors in a cable route database could undermine the adequacy of fire protection for a nuclear power plant that is based on fire hazard assessment and fire probabilistic safety assessment. An earlier paper examined the potential for these latent errors to compromise safety and the risk goals for a station. It suggested three strategies for addressing the incremental risk. This paper focuses on quality assurance in developing the cable route database as a means of reducing the risk. A strategic and cost effective methodology is presented to reduce the incremental risk while continuously reducing the probability of cable routing errors over the lifetime of the plant. (author)