• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.174-182
• /
• 1991

Effects of human error relevant to the periodic test are incorporated in the evaluations of the unavailability and optimal test interval of a safety system. Two types of possible human error with respect to the test and maintenance are considered. One is the possibility that a good safety system is inadvertently left in a bad state after test（Type A human error) and the other is the possibility that a bad safety system is undetected upon the test（Type B human error). An event tree model is developed for the steady-state unavailability of a safety system in order to determine the effects of human errors on the system unavailability and the optimal test interval. A reliability analysis of the Safety Injection System (SIS) was peformed to evaluate the effects of human error on the SIS unavailability. Results of various sensitivity analyses show that ; (1) the steady-state unavailability of the safety system increases as the probabilities of both types of human error increase and it is far more sensitive to Type A human error, (2) the optimal test interval increases slightly as the probability of Type A human error increases but it decreases as the probability of Type B human error increases, and (3) provided that the test interval of the safety injction pump is kept unchanged, the unavailability of SIS increases significantly as the probability of Type A human error increases but slightly as the probability of Type B human error increases. Therefore, to obtain the realistic result of reliability analysis, one should take shorter test interval (not optimal test interval) so that the unavailability of SIS can be maintained at the same level irrespective of human error. Since Type A human error during test & maintenance influeces greatly on the system unavailability, special efforts to reduce the possibility of Type A human error are essential in the course of test & maintenance.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.150-156
• /
• 2000

In this paper, the human error contributions to the system unavailability are calculated and compared to the mechanical failure contributions. The system unavailability is a probability that a system is in the failed state at time t, given that it was the normal state at time zero. It is a function of human errors committed during maintenance and tests, component failure rates, surveillance test intervals, and allowed outage time. The THERP (Technique for Human Error Rate Prediction), generally called "HRA handbook", is used here for evaluating human error rates. This method treats the operator as one of the system components, and human reliability is assessed in the same manner as that of components. Based on the calculation results, the human error contribution to the system unavailability is shown to be more important than the mechanical failure contribution in the example system. It is also demonstrated that this method is very flexible in that it can be applied to any hazardous facilities, such as gas valve stations and chemical process plants.ss plants.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.36 no.6
• /
• pp.485-496
• /
• 2004

Typical probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) results were used to estimate the performance indicator (PI) thresholds of unplanned reactor scram (URS) and safety system unavailability (SSU) for Korean nuclear power plants (NPPs). The changes in core damage frequency (${\Delta}$CDFs) of $10^{-6}/yr$, $10^{-5}/yr$, and $10^{-4}/yr$ were adopted as the risk criteria in setting up the PI thresholds. The PI thresholds for the URS were estimated using information pertaining to the initiating event frequencies, the CDF, and the CDF contribution of each initiating event. The PI thresholds of the SSU were estimated using information on the unavailability, the Fussell-Vesely importance, and the CDF.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
• /
• v.48 no.5
• /
• pp.517-523
• /
• 1999

The Start-up transformers or on-site stand-by transformers are installed for the start-up and shut-down of generator and emergency status in unclear power plant. The on-site power supply configuration using these transformers must be detemined by considering configuration requirements, site characteristics, reliability and availability severely because it is remarkably important for safety and benefit of plant. The start-up or stand-by power supply configuration has been determined considering only safety requirements and construction cost up to now in Korea. I study various reliability estimating methods for the prediction of availability, and estimate the unavailability for the start-up power supply system of two 1,000㎿ unclear power plants. I also detemine the reliability and unavailability and unavailavility of equipment, system and configuration using FTA method.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.59 no.8
• /
• pp.1456-1463
• /
• 2010

The safety critical systems in nuclear power plants should be designed to have a high level of fault tolerant capability because those systems are used for protection or mitigation of the postulated accidents of nuclear reactor. Due to increasing of the system complexity of the digital based system in nuclear fields, the reliability of the digital based systems without an auto-test or a self-diagnostic feature is generally lower than those of analog system. To overcome this problem, additional redundant architectures in each redundant channel and self-diagnostic features are commonly integrated into the digital safety systems. The self diagnostic function is a key factor for increasing fault tolerant capabilities in the digital based safety system. This paper presents an availability and safety evaluation model to analyze the effect to the system's fault tolerant capabilities depending on self-diagnostic features when the loss or erroneous behaviors of self-diagnostic function are expected to occur. The analysis result of the proposed model on the several modules of a safety platform shows that the improvement effect on unavailability of each module has generally become smaller than the result of usage of conventional models and the unavailability itself has changed significantly depending on the characteristics of failures or errors of self-diagnostic function.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
• /
• v.48 no.4
• /
• pp.358-364
• /
• 1999

The auxiliary transformers or start-up/stand-by transformer(s) are installed against the start-up and shut-down of generator and emergency status in fossil power plant. The on-site power supply configuration using these transformers must be determined, considering configuration requirements, site characteristics, reliability and availability severely because it is remarkably important for safety and ecfonomy of plant. The auxiliary or start-up/stand-by power supply configuration has been determined considering only safety requirements and construction cost until now in Korea. This paper presents general theorems for the reliability estimation and proposes 2-unit based 4 alternatives for the start-up power supply stystem of 500㎿ standardized fossil power plant. The reliability and unavailability of equipment, system and configuration are determined using minimal cut-set methodology. The optimized plan of 4 alternatives is determined based on this ultimate reliability and unavailability.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2005.05a
• /
• pp.81-83
• /
• 2005

The Reactor Protection System (RPS) is a very important system in a nuclear power plant because the system shuts down the reactor to maintain the reactor core integrity and the reactor coolant system pressure boundary if the plant conditions approach the specified safety limits. This paper describes the unavailability assessment of a digital reactor protection system using the fault tree analysis technique. The fault tree technique can be expressed in terms of combinations of the basic event failures. In this paper, a prediction method of the hardware failure rate is suggested for a digital reactor protection system. and applied to the reactor protection system being developed in Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 2003.05a
• /
• pp.89-89
• /
• 2003

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.225-233
• /
• 2012

The research discusses interrelationship of structural and reliability importance measures which used in the probabilistic safety assessment. The most frequently used component importance measures, such as Birnbaum's Importance (BI), Risk Reduction (RR), Risk Reduction Worth (RRW), RA (Risk Achievement), Risk Achievement Worth (RAW), Fussel Vesely (FV) and Critically Importance (CI) can be derived from two structure importance measures that are developed based on the size and the number of Minimal Path Set (MPS) and Minimal Cut Set (MCS). In order to show an effectiveness of importance measures which is developed in this paper, the three representative functional structures, such as series-parallel, k out of n and bridge are used to compare with Birnbaum's Importance measure. In addition, the study presents the implementation examples of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) metrics and alternating renewal process models with exponential distribution to calculate the availability and unavailability of component facility for improving system performances. System state structure functions in terms of component states can be converted into the system availability (unavailability) functions by substituting the component reliabilities (unavailabilities) for the component states. The applicable examples are presented in order to help the understanding of practitioners.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.33 no.6
• /
• pp.596-604
• /
• 2001

This paper quantitatively presents the effects of important factors of the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) of safety-critical digital systems. The result which is quantified using fault tree analysis methodology shows that these factors remarkably affect the system safety. In this paper we list the factors which should be represented by the model for PSA. Based on the PSA experience, we select three important factors which are expected to dominate the system unavailability. They are the avoidance of common cause failure, the coverage of fault tolerant mechanisms and software failure probability. We Quantitatively demonstrate the effect of these three factors. The broader usage of digital equipment in nuclear power plants gives rise to the safety problems. Even though conventional PSA methods are immature for applying to microprocessor-based digital systems, practical needs force us to apply it because the result of PSA plays an important role in proving the safety of a designed system. We expect the analysis result to provide valuable feedback to the designers of digital safety- critical systems.