Architecture Design of Nuclear Power Plants Systems through Viewpoints‐based Systems Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a method to perform the architecture definition and design of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) systems. This method is based on the viewpoints concept and on an existing Model‐Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach that was tailored to address the complexity factors of NPP engineering, progressively guarantee the comprehensiveness of the design and facilitate the safety assessment. This paper also provides an illustration of how this method was applied to define the architecture of a Nuclear Island system, provides valuable findings for the designer organization regarding the deployment of MBSE approaches and presents their key benefits and future improvement actions.