A Redundancy-Guided Approach for the Hazard Analysis of Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems in Advanced Nuclear Power Plants

Digital instrumentation and control (I&C) upgrades are a vital research area for the nuclear industry. Despite their performance benefits, deployment of digital I&C in nuclear power plants (NPPs) has been limited. Digital I&C systems exhibit complex failure modes including common cause failures (CCFs), which can be difficult to identify. This paper describes the development of a redundancy-guided application of the Systems-Theoretic Process Analysis and fault tree analysis for the hazard analysis of digital I&C in advanced NPPs. The resulting Redundancy-Guided Systems-Theoretic Hazard Analysis (RESHA) is applied for the case study of a representative state-of-the-art digital reactor trip system. The analysis qualitatively and systematically identifies the most critical CCFs and other hazards of digital I&C systems. Ultimately, the RESHA can help researchers make informed decisions for how, and to what degree, defensive measures such as redundancy, diversity, and defense in depth can be used to mitigate or eliminate the potential hazards of digital I&C systems.

Automated summary

Digital instrumentation and control (I&C) upgrades are important for the nuclear industry, but deployment in nuclear power plants is limited. The development of Redundancy-Guided Systems-Theoretic Hazard Analysis (RESHA) aids in identifying critical Common Cause Failures (CCFs) and other hazards in digital I&C systems, assisting researchers in making informed decisions on defense measures.