Dynamic Flowgraph Methodology Assessment of an FPGA Based Postaccident Monitoring System for Westinghouse AP1000 Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

A fieldprogrammable gate array (FPGA) is a type of integrated circuit that is programmed after being manufactured. These FPGAbased systems are considered to be viable alternatives to replace many obsolete instrumentation and control (I&C) systems that are used in nuclear plants. This paper describes an FPGAbased labscale implementation of a postaccident monitoring system (PAMS), for a Westinghouse AP1000 reactor. This system will monitor vital parameters in the event of a serious reactor accident. The system reliability was analyzed using the dynamic flowgraph methodology (DFM). DFM was applied to finetune the design parameters by determining the potential causes of faults in the design.