Nuclear Regulatory Commission November 14, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is conducting research to support development of regulatory guidance for using risk information related to digital systems in the licensing actions of nuclear power plants (NPPs). The objective of this research is to identify and develop methods, analytical tools, and regulatory guidance to support (1) using information on the risks of digital systems in NPP licensing decisions and (2) including models of digital systems into NPP probabilistic risk assessments (PRAs). As part of this research, NRC is sponsoring a project on the use of traditional PRA methods to develop and quantitatively assess reliability models of digital systems. The initial tasks of this project, including preparatory work for developing reliability models of an example system, are addressed in NUREG/CR-6962, ``Traditional Probabilistic Risk Assessment Methods for Digital Systems'' (to be published shortly). The application of the selected traditional methods to the example system is documented in draft NUREG/CR-XXXX, ``Modeling a Digital Feedwater Control System Using Traditional Probabilistic Risk Assessment Methods.'' This notice announces the availability of the draft NUREG/CR for public comment.