ICDE Project Report: Common-Cause Failures of Safety and Relief Valves

NEA/CSNI/R(2020)17
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Common-cause failure (CCF) events can significantly impact the availability of safety systems of nuclear power plants. For this reason, several Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) member countries initiated the International Common-cause Failure Data Exchange (ICDE) project in 1994. In 1997, the NEA Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) supported the carrying out of this project within the NEA framework; since then the project has successfully operated over eight consecutive terms (the current and ninth term being 2023-2026).

The purpose of the ICDE project is to allow multiple countries to collaborate and exchange CCF data to enhance the quality of risk analyses that include CCF modelling. Because CCF events are typically rare, most countries do not experience enough CCF events to perform meaningful analyses. Data combined from several countries, however, lead to more rigorous analyses.

The qualitative insights gained from the analysis of CCF events are made available by reports that are distributed without restrictions. It is not the aim of those reports to provide direct access to the CCF raw data recorded in the ICDE database. The confidentiality of the data is a prerequisite of operating the project. The ICDE database is accessible only to those members of the ICDE project working group who have contributed data to the databank.