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Qualification of safety-critical software for digital reactor safety system in nuclear power plants

 
KWON Kee-Choon, PARK Gee-Yong, KIM Jang-Yeol, and LEE Jang-Soo
 
Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, 989-111 Daedeok-daero, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-353, Republic of Korea ({kckwon, gypark, jykim, jslee}@kaeri.re.kr)
 
Abstract: This paper describes the software qualification activities for the safety-critical software of the digital reactor safety system in nuclear power plants. The main activities of the software qualification processes are the preparation of software planning documentations, verification and validation (V&V) of the software requirements specifications (SRS), software design specifications (SDS) and codes, and the testing of the integrated software and integrated system. Moreover, the software safety analysis and software configuration management are involved in the software qualification processes. The V&V procedure for SRS and SDS contains a technical evaluation, licensing suitability evaluation, inspection and traceability analysis, formal verification, software safety analysis, and an evaluation of the software configuration management. The V&V processes for the code are a traceability analysis, source code inspection, test case and test procedure generation. Testing is the major V&V activity of the software integration and system integration phases. The software safety analysis employs a hazard operability method and software fault tree analysis. The software configuration management in each software life cycle is performed by the use of a nuclear software configuration management tool. Through these activities, we can achieve the functionality, performance, reliability, and safety that are the major V&V objectives of the safety-critical software in nuclear power plants.
Keyword: safety-critical software; verification and validation; digital reactor safety system; nuclear instrumentation and control
 
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