A Risk-Informed On-Line Test and Maintenance Framework for Redundant Instrumentation and Control Systems in Nuclear Power Plants

Deregulation forces Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) to operate not only safely, but also more economically. Instrumentation and Control (I&C) systems in NPPs play an important role to reduce operational related costs. Therefore, a well-planned test and maintenance (T&M) strategy for I&C systems is more important then ever in this deregulated energy market. This paper presents a general T&M framework for digital I&C systems in NPPs. There are three main parts within this framework: probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), reliability analysis, and costs evaluation. PSA is used to set risk-informed unavailability limits. Reliability analysis is used to derive the relation between the unavailability and the T&M interval. Costs associated with not only T&M, but also reactor mal-shutdowns are evaluated. The Shutdown System Number One (SDSI) in Canadian Deuterium-Uranium (CANDU) based NPPs is used as an example system to illustrate the proposed framework.