Quantitative Evaluation of Nuclear-Reactor Protective-Equipment using Markov Approach

A reliability model and quantitative evaluation of the protective equipment used in nuclear reactor are presented. The model uses a Markov approach, and takes into account the states in which the equipment can reside over its life. The quantitative reliability assessment is provided via three reliability indices for on-line as well as off-line preventive maintenance. The numerical results illustrate that the method provides quantitative measures of reliability of a nuclear reactor protective equipment which do really respond to the variations in reliability of maintenance, mean testing interval, and mean testing duration. These measures could be used to compare the reliability merits of alternative protective systems. The analytic procedures for this analysis could be extended for nonexponential distributions.