Application of system reliability analysis to plant status monitoring

The author describes a practical software tool which utilizes system reliability analysis techniques to assist nuclear power plant operators and maintenance staff in making timely decisions and reducing routine work burdens. Specifically, this software, plant status monitoring (PSM), will determine system operability status, monitor technical specification and action statements compliance, assess dynamic operational reliability at various power levels (plant health), and monitor and produce equipment outage tags in consultation with technical specification requirements and plant health implications. The engineering intelligence derived from PSM can be used to support a broad range of functions which include the online activities for addressing plant O&M (operations and maintenance) assistance and offline activities for performing other maintenance functions.<>