A major issue to be addressed in safety and risk studies related to advanced reactors is the reliability of the implemented passive safety features. The passive safety system operation is a quite complex process. This complexity gives rise to unpredictable failure patterns. While there are a number of wellestablished failure analysis (physics-of-failure) models for individual components, these models do not hold good for complex systems as their failure behaviours may be totally different. Failure analysis of individual components does consider the environmental interactions but is unable to capture the system interaction effects on failure behaviour. These models are based on the assumption of independent failure mechanisms. Dependency relationships and interactions of components in a complex system might give rise to some new types of failures that are not considered during the individual failure analysis of that component.
The approach to the passive system reliability assessment based on independent modes of failure begins by identifying critical parameters, as input to basic events, corresponding to the failure modes, arranged in a series system configuration. Within this methodology, the selected system critical parameters are properly modelled through the construction of probability functions. The application of the methodology to a realistic thermal-hydraulic passive system design is illustrated. The analysis reveals that the critical parameters are not suitable to be chosen independently of each other, mainly because of the expected synergism between the different phenomena under investigation, with the potential to jeopardize the system performance. This conclusion allows the implementation of the proposed methodology, by properly capturing the interaction between various failure modes.