(A) semi-markovian approach to reliability analysis of the alternating system

Abstract

It is now recognized in the evaluation of the technical specifications for the nuclear power plants that current testing and maintenance requirements invoke too many inadvertent reactor trips and that operating staff must devote significant amount of time and effort to comply with the requirements. Therefore, significant benefits could result from changes of the current technical specifications. With this recognition, the value and the impact of the proposed changes in the allowed outage time(AOT) and surveillance test interval(STI) are evaluated for the alternating system. The alternating system usually consists of multitrains and the operation is alternated train by train according to the design. A Markov process is suitable for the modeling of the dynamic features of a system. Examples of the dynamic features are multistates, test/repair policies, dependencies on and renewal effects of demands, and human errors. A semi-Markov process is used for the evaluation of the alter