Reliability assurance for regulation of advanced reactors

Advanced nuclear power plants must achieve higher levels of safety than the first generation of plants. Showing that this is indeed true provides new challenges to reliability and risk assessment methods in the analysis of the designs employing passive and semipassive protection. Reliability assurance of the advanced reactor system is important for determining the safety of the design and for determining the plant operability. Safety is the primary concern, but operability is considered indicative of good and safe operation. The authors discuss several concerns for reliability assurance of the advanced design, encompassing reliability determination, level of detail required in advanced reactor submittals, data for reliability assurance, systems interactions and common cause effects, passive component reliability, PRA-based configuration control system, and inspection, training, maintenance, and test requirements. Suggested approaches are provided for addressing each of these topics.<>