Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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A formal approach to support the identification of unsafe control actions of STPA for nuclear protection systems

  • Received : 2021.07.19
  • Accepted : 2021.10.21
  • Published : 2022.05.25
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Abstract

STPA (System-Theoretic Process Analysis) is a widely used safety analysis technique to identify UCAs (Unsafe Control Actions) resulting in potential losses. It is totally dependent on the experience and ability of analysts to construct an information model called Control Structures, upon which analysts try to identify unsafe controls between system components. This paper proposes a formal approach to support the manual identification of UCAs, effectively and systematically. It allows analysts to mechanically extract Process Model, an important element that makes up the Control Structures, from a formal requirements specification for a software controller. It then concisely constructs the contents of Context Tables, from which analysts can identify all relevant UCAs effectively, using a software fault tree analysis technique. The case study with a preliminary version of a Korean nuclear reactor protections system shows the proposed approach's effectiveness and applicability.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This paper was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No.2021R1F1A1047246).

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