Operational safety system reliability. Progress report, May 15, 1976--August 14, 1976

The current research effort is roughly divided into two areas, (1) the determination of the protection system reliability and its probability distribution based on the failure distribution of the components and (2) the study of statistical characteristics of protection system sensors in order to extract the maximum information and to better anticipate off-normal conditions to promote safety and possibly avoid costly plant outages. This report summarizes the work to date in these two areas. The goal is to develop methods and models suitable for analysis of fast breeder protection systems during the operational phase, with emphasis on practical reliability results and realistic determination of their confidence levels.