Estimation of SMART Control & Instrumentation Reliability Via Structured Expert Judgement

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SMART Control and Instrumentation (SC&I) are “intelligent” control devices that employ programmable electronic components to collect and process data to enhance performance. This project will develop a process to generate realistic reliability estimates of SC&I to support nuclear power plant (NPP) safety cases. Civil nuclear power generation, by nuclear fission, is a safety critical industry where failures of systems can lead to severe consequences. This project will help ensure that risk insights from safety cases are valid and resources are focussed efficiently to improve safety and operation of civil NPPs. This has the potential to reduce system failures that could cause an incident at a NPP, affecting the operators, the public and the environment. Improvements in the decision making process about equipment use translate to improvements in the safety, efficiency and availability of NPPs overall. Any slight improvements in these factors have a large economic benefit since the cost of accidents is high, as is the cost of unavailability of a power station. Added to the economic benefits are the health and environmental benefits of avoided accidents, and incremental improvement to the security of supply of the UK grid.