Study on Advanced PWR NPP Safety Related Equipment Qualification Function Requirement Design Methodology

In order to guarantee NPP operation safety, it is necessary to ensure the reliability operation of safety related equipment by equipment qualification. In the past, plant equipment qualification function requirement is an envelope requirement based on engineering experience, and it is not beneficial to NPP economical efficiency. These days, representative Gen III NPP (e.g. AP1000 and EPR) adopt improved technology in equipment qualification function requirement design, and more accurate requirement is designed. In this paper, AP1000 and EPR equipment qualification function requirement design methodology is studied and analyzed as the first step. Then, a safety related equipment qualification function requirement design methodology which is applicable for China self intellectual property Gen III NPP is provided. Furthermore, an example of equipment qualification function requirement design is carried out by analyzing nuclear instrument system power range channel sensor.

General Purpose Silicon Trigger Board for the CMS Pixel Read Out Chips

A semester research project was completed at Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich) and the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in the spring of 2010. A new kind of trigger based on silicon pixel sensors was developed for the commissioning of the current Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) pixel detector. Prior to this trigger there was no silicon sensor based trigger that used the same technology as the pixel detector. The current trigger systems involve cumbersome photomultiplier tubes and Nuclear Instrument Module (NIM) crates to process the signals. To improve on these trigger systems it was thought to develop a trigger using pixel technology in the form of a printed circuit board that assimilates the signal processing circuitry. The board worked well, although there were limitations (e.g. crosstalk occurred so copper shielding was needed). A second generation trigger board currently exists. It fixes many of the problems encountered with the first board.