COMPARING OF LICENSING APPROACHES FOR FPGA-BASED SAFETY IC PLATFORMS

摘要

Harmonization of different regulatory requirements and licensing approaches is still a hot topic. Concerning relatively new technologies like Field Programmable Gates Array (FPGA) in Instrumentation and Control (I&C) systems deficiency of regulations makes this problem more difficult. That raises a discussion about harmonization versus different licensing approach. The paper presents an approach to comparison of licensing requirements for FPGA-based safety I&C platforms. At the moment in the world there are three the main approaches to NPP I&C licensing: 1) U.S. NRC requirements based; 2) Safety Integrity Level (SIL) requirements based (in accordance with standards series IEC 61508); 3) IEC nuclear standards requirements based. The paper focuses on U.S. NRC approach to claim licensing goals for FPGA-based NPP I&C systems. The chapters below describe the main topic in licensing process for FPGA-based platform such as equipment qualification assessment and I&C platform life cycle review. After that an approach to implement a life cycle for FPGA-based NPP application is discussed.