Research on Improving the Engineering Design of Nuclear Safety-Class DCS Based on Process Optimization

Nuclear safety-class DCS is an important part of nuclear power plant (NPP), whose engineering design process needs to adhere strictly to relevant safety regulations for NPP quality assurance. Using the hardware design of a NPP nuclear safety-class DCS project (NPP-A) as an example, this paper studies the types and proportions of quality problems. Such problems can be solved by use of quality tools, design process optimization and technical safeguards. Quality tools like Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) can help with problems like inadequate impact analysis of single faults. Optimizing the timing, dependence, input and output arrangement among the phases of the design process, and incorporating the established process in the form of written documents into the nuclear quality assurance system, help reduce quality problems in hardware design. With the aid of technical safeguards like computer software, the design and application of automatic diagnosis tools leads to less problems caused by human error. This research has shown positive effects after its application in real operations of NPP-A.