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- Reliability Assessment for Digital Systems: Under a Small
Business Innovative Research Contract (SBIR) with the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, SoHaR has developed a tool
to quantitatively assess digital system reliability (including
software) based on failure data gathered during test and
operation. The approach involves combining reliability modelling
of redundant systems together with data reduction and statistical
analysis of failure data to calculate upper and lower bounds
of reliability and availability.
- Programming Guidelines for High Level Languages Used in
Safety Systems: Under a contract to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, SoHaR has developed a set of programming guidelines
for 6 high level languages that are used (or may be used)
in digital safety systems. The goal of the program is to
create guidelines that can be used by both organizations
developing safety related systems and by auditors participating
in the licensing process to evaluate the robustness and
safety of the developed software.
- Fault Tolerant Distributed Reactor Safety and Control
System: SoHaR is developing a fault tolerant safety and
control system using a microcomputer network which will
be installed at the Experimental Breeder Reactor Facility
(EBR II) in Idaho Falls. The work is being funded through
a U.S. Department of Energy contract awarded in the highly
competitive Small Business Innovative Research program,
and has resulted in the development of enhancements to multitasking
operating systems to enable multiple nodes on a local area
network to function as a single fault tolerant distributed
real time control system.
- Nuclear Reactor Control Systems Audits: On behalf of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, SoHaR has performed audits
on both qualified digital control systems and non-qualified
safety parameter display systems for PWRs produced by Westinghouse
and Babcock and Wilcox. Systems for specific plants have
also been audited in California, Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee.
- Guidelines for the Development of Safety Critical Systems:
As analog safety systems for nuclear power installations
are being replaced by digital versions the U. S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, seeing the need for acceptance criteria
for these systems, turned to SoHaR for help in drafting
guidelines for design and development, language selection,
software test, and fault tolerance or fault avoidance practices.
- Design Guidelines and Verification and Validation of High
Integrity Software: Under contracts to both the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission and the Electric Power Research Institute,
SoHaR developed design guidelines and verification and validation
criteria for software used in high integrity systems such
as reactor shutdown systems or engineered safeguard systems.
- Advanced Fault Tolerant Reactor Control Systems: Under
a separate Department of Energy SBIR contract, SoHaR is
developing the architecture for a fault tolerant distributed
systems for advanced reactor control. The goal of this system
is to develop an architecture which will allow for the insertion
of sophisticated (perhaps AI-based) control functions while
retaining a highly verified fault tolerant kernel system
that would detect and recover from faults in the more advanced
systems. The major benefit of the system is to facilitate
licensing of advanced control functions without the need
for a stringent (and very expensive) verification and validation
of a large amount of code.
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