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Software Reliability Analysis in Probabilistic Risk Analysis

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Progress of Nuclear Safety for Symbiosis and Sustainability

Abstract

Probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) is a tool which can reveal shortcomings of the NPP design in general. PRA analysts have not had sufficient guiding principles in modelling particular digital components malfunctions. Digital I&C systems are mostly analysed simply and the software reliability estimates are engineering judgments often lacking a proper justification. The OECD/NEA Working Group RISK’s task DIGREL develops a taxonomy of failure modes of digital I&C systems. The EU FP7 project HARMONICS develops software reliability estimation method based on an analytic approach and Bayesian belief network.

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Acknowledgements

Contributions from the WGRISK/DIGREL task group members are acknowledged. The following organisations form November 2012 the task group, being responsible for planning and organisation of work meetings and preparation of the best practice guidelines: VTT, Finland; Risk Pilot, Sweden; IRSN, France; EDF, France; AREVA, France; GRS, Germany; KAERI, Korea; NRC, USA; Ohio State University, USA; NRI, Czech; JNES, Japan; VEIKI, Hungary; ENEL, Italy; NRG, the Netherlands; RELKO, Slovakia and CSNC, Canada. The Finnish work has been financed by NKS (Nordic nuclear safety research), SAFIR2014 (The Finnish Research Programme on Nuclear Power Plant Safety 2011–2014) and the members of the Nordic PSA Group: Forsmark, Oskarshamn Kraftgrupp, Ringhals AB and Swedish Radiation Safety Authority. NKS conveys its gratitude to all organizations and persons who by means of financial support or contributions in kind have made the work presented in this report possible.

HARMONICS is co-funded by the European Commission, the UK C&I Nuclear Industry Forum (CINIF) and the consortium organisations. The project consortium has five partners: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Électricité de France (EDF), Institute for Safety Technology (ISTeC) from Germany, Adelard LLP from UK and Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten (SSM) from Sweden. The public website address of the project is http://harmonics.vtt.fi. The author acknowledges the contributions of the other HARMONICS project members.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Risk Pilot AB, Rummunlyöjänkatu 11 G, 02600, Espoo, Finland

    Jan-Erik Holmberg

Authors
  1. Jan-Erik Holmberg
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Correspondence to Jan-Erik Holmberg .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Hidekazu Yoshikawa

  2. College of Nuclear Science and Technolog, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China

    Zhijian Zhang

Nomenclatures

Nomenclatures

BBN:

Bayesian belief network

BN:

Bayesian network

CCF:

Common-cause failures

CEMSIS:

Cost effective modernisation of systems important to safety

CSRM:

Context-based software risk model

DIGREL:

Guidelines for reliability analysis of digital systems in PSA context

FMEA:

Failure modes and effects analysis

HARMONICS:

Harmonised assessment of reliability of modern nuclear I&C software

I&C:

Instrumentation and control

NPP:

Nuclear power plant

pfd:

Probability of failure per demand

PRA:

Probabilistic risk analysis

SRGMs:

Software reliability growth models

V&V:

Verification and validation

WGRisk:

Working group on risk assessment

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© 2014 Springer Japan

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Holmberg, JE. (2014). Software Reliability Analysis in Probabilistic Risk Analysis. In: Yoshikawa, H., Zhang, Z. (eds) Progress of Nuclear Safety for Symbiosis and Sustainability. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54610-8_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54610-8_32

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo

  • Print ISBN: 978-4-431-54609-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-4-431-54610-8

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