New Technique for Determining Unavailability of Computer Controlled Safety Systems

摘要

The availability of a safety system for a fusion reactor is determined. A fusion reactor processes tritium and requires an Emergency Tritium Cleanup (ETC) system for accidental tritium releases. The ETC is computer controlled and because of its complexity, is an excellent candidate for this analysis. The ETC system unavailability, for preliminary untested software, is calculated based on different assumptions about operator response. These assumptions are: (a) the operator shuts down the system after the first indication of plant failure; (b) the operator shuts down the system after following optimized failure verification procedures; or (c) the operator is taken out of the decision process, and the computer uses the optimized failure verification procedures. (ERA citation 09:024502)