A practical methodology for modeling and estimation of common cause failure parameters in multi-unit nuclear PSA model

In this paper, we propose a practical methodology for modelling and estimation of CCF in a multi-unit PSA context. Two methods of modelling multi-unit CCF are firstly presented. A methodology for collecting and analyzing multi-unit CCF data is then proposed. This method is developed by extending the original impact vectors approach to the multi-unit context. Finally, in order to estimate the multi-unit CCF parameters in the case of incomplete data, we propose a CCF simulation method. The application of this method is considered in three different cases and compared with Bayesian and mapping up methods.