Westinghouse has received the final Safety Evaluation Report from the USA's Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its Advanced Logic System® (ALS) platform, the company's next generation safety system instrumentation and control solution for operating plant safety system upgrades aimed at new nuclear plant opportunities.
The ALS solution is a logic-based platform that relies on simple hardware architecture instead of using a microprocessor or software for operation. It utilises logic implemented through field programmable gate array technology, and has been approved by the US NRC as an acceptable approach to address diversity and defence-in-depth concerns within digital safety system applications. The platform is scalable, as ALS-based solutions can provide single-system replacements or full safety instrumentation and control replacement.
The ALS solution targets safety-critical control systems, where reliability and integrity are of the highest importance. The platform incorporates advanced features to allow for diagnostics, testability and modularity. Diagnostics and testing capabilities are designed into the platform to provide a systematic approach to maintaining and testing the system. It is designed to be at the appropriate level of complexity to achieve high reliability and integrity and allow flexibility to target multiple safety-critical applications within a given plant.
