A Review of Six Human Reliability Assessment Issues for the UK Nuclear Power & Reprocessing Industries

Author(s):  
Barry Kirwan ◽  
Keith Rea
1981 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-99
Author(s):  
David E. Embrey

The procedures of system reliability assessment in nuclear power are described, with particular reference to the need for evaluating human reliability. The shortcomings of existing approaches are discussed, and an alternative methodology described, which utilises quantified subjective judgement.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2B) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanderley Vasconcelos ◽  
Wellington Antonio Soares ◽  
Raissa Oliveira Marques ◽  
Silvério Ferreira Silva Jr ◽  
Amanda Laureano Raso

Non-destructive inspection (NDI) is one of the key elements in ensuring quality of engineering systems and their safe use. This inspection is a very complex task, during which the inspectors have to rely on their sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills. It requires high vigilance once it is often carried out on large components, over a long period of time, and in hostile environments and restriction of workplace. A successful NDI requires careful planning, choice of appropriate NDI methods and inspection procedures, as well as qualified and trained inspection personnel. A failure of NDI to detect critical defects in safety-related components of nuclear power plants, for instance, may lead to catastrophic consequences for workers, public and environment. Therefore, ensuring that NDI is reliable and capable of detecting all critical defects is of utmost importance. Despite increased use of automation in NDI, human inspectors, and thus human factors, still play an important role in NDI reliability. Human reliability is the probability of humans conducting specific tasks with satisfactory performance. Many techniques are suitable for modeling and analyzing human reliability in NDI of nuclear power plant components, such as FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) and THERP (Technique for Human Error Rate Prediction). An example by using qualitative and quantitative assessesments with these two techniques to improve typical NDI of pipe segments of a core cooling system of a nuclear power plant, through acting on human factors issues, is presented.


Author(s):  
Eugene Babeshko ◽  
Ievgenii Bakhmach ◽  
Vyacheslav Kharchenko ◽  
Eugene Ruchkov ◽  
Oleksandr Siora

Operating reliability assessment of instrumentation and control systems (I&Cs) is always one of the most important activities, especially for critical domains like nuclear power plants (NPPs). Intensive use of relatively new technologies like field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in I&C which appear in upgrades and in newly built NPPs makes task to develop and validate advanced operating reliability assessment methods that consider specific technology features very topical. Increased integration densities make the reliability of integrated circuits the most crucial point in modern NPP I&Cs. Moreover, FPGAs differ in some significant ways from other integrated circuits: they are shipped as blanks and are very dependent on design configured into them. Furthermore, FPGA design could be changed during planned NPP outage for different reasons. Considering all possible failure modes of FPGA-based NPP I&C at design stage is a quite challenging task. Therefore, operating reliability assessment is one of the most preferable ways to perform comprehensive analysis of FPGA-based NPP I&Cs. This paper summarizes our experience on operating reliability analysis of FPGA based NPP I&Cs.


Author(s):  
Yao Wang

According to existing research results, fire risk makes a significant contribution to the total risk of a nuclear power plant (NPP). So fire probabilistic safety analysis (PSA) for NPPs is becoming more and more important in recent years. How to perform human reliability analysis (HRA) which is an essential part of PSA is therefore being paid more and more attention in fire PSA. This paper describes the characteristics and special considerations of HRA in fire PSA, and demonstrates in fire PSA how to use SPAR-H method which is so-called an advanced second-generation HRA method and is being widely used in PSA for Chinese NPPs. The study results can be a reference for other HRA analysts to use SPAR-H method in fire PSA models or other PSA models in Chinese NPPs or the world-wide nuclear industry.


Author(s):  
Tatiana Grebennikova ◽  
Abbie N Jones ◽  
Clint Alan Sharrad

Irradiated graphite waste management is one of the major challenges of nuclear power-plant decommissioning throughout the world and significantly in the UK, France and Russia where over 85 reactors employed...


Author(s):  
Liu Dongxu ◽  
Xu Dongling ◽  
Zhang Shuhui ◽  
Hu Xiaoying

The probability that the safety I&C system fails to actuate or advertently actuates RT or ESF functions, in part, essentially determines whether a nuclear power plant could operate safely and efficiently. Since more conservative assumptions and simplifications are introduced during the analysis, this paper achieves solid results by performing the modeling and calculation based on a relatively simple approach, the reliability block diagram (RBD) method. A typical safety I&C platform structure is involved in the model presented in this paper. From the perspective of conservation and simplicity, some assumptions are adopted in this paper. A group of formulas is derived in this paper based on Boolean algebra, probability theory, basic reliability concepts and equations, to facilitate the calculations of probabilities that the safety I&C system fails to actuate or advertently actuates RT or ESF functions. All the inputs of the analysis and calculation in this paper, which includes the I&C platform structure, the constitution of the hardware modules, and reliability data, are referenced to the nuclear power plant universal database where applicable. Although the conclusion drawn in the paper doesn’t apply to the I&C platform assessment for a specific plant, the method of modeling and process of analysis provides an illustration of an alternative quantitative reliability assessment approach for a typical safety I&C system installed in the nuclear power plant.


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