Quantification of unavailability caused by random failures and maintenance human errors in nuclear power plants

Abstract

Risk analysis of any equipment or system estimates the unavailability of redundant components due to hardware failure, periodic test and repair work, and human errors in maintenance tasks. A model has been developed in this study to estimate the unavailability of a periodically repairable component of a system that considers hardware failure and maintenance errors due to human failure, and which is applicable to estimate system unavailability in nuclear power plants as well as other industries. A sensitivity analysis has been performed based on the newly developed model considering multiple levels of human errors in maintenance tasks to observe the effects of maintenance errors on overall unavailability of a component. The effect of human error on the optimal frequency of periodic maintenance of a device has been analyzed based on the newly developed unavailability quantification model. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.