Application of Monte Carlo Methods in Reactor Protection System Reliability Research

Digital Reactor Protection System (RPS) is one of the most important systems in instrumentation and control systems of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP). The reliability analysis of RPS plays an important role both in theory and engineering application. Traditional reliability methods, such as fault tree analysis and Markov chain theory, have many limitations in the research of RPS reliability, since the number of system states increases exponentially with the growth of system complexity. Aiming at the reliability analysis of complex system like RPS, the Monte Carlo method simulates the system behaviors and obtains the reliability calculations through a large number of simulations. This paper takes a preliminary research of RPS reliability based on Monte Carlo Methods, including static reliability analysis based on Monte Carlo simulation of the behavior of every equipment in the RPS, and dynamic characters of the RPS based on the simulation of RPS period tests.