Digital Instrumentation and Control Working Group (DICWG)

The MDEP Digital Instrumentation and Controls Working Group (DICWG) was approved by MDEP's Policy Group in March 2008 and meets approximately 3 times a year. All MDEP members and the IAEA are invited to participate in this working group's activities.

The DICWG's main objectives are as follows:

• to document common positions in the DI&C safety systems design areas;
• to harmonise and converge national codes, standards and regulatory requirements and practices in this area while recognising the sovereign rights and responsibilities of national regulators in carrying out their safety reviews of new reactor designs (see the DICWG programme plan for more details of the group's work).

The DICWG interacts regularly with the following organisations:

• IEC (International Electro-technical Commission) Subcommittee 45A, Instrumentation and Control of Nuclear Facilities;
• IEEE (Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineers);
• other organisations involved in the design of digital I&C safety systems for nuclear power plants.

The DICWG reports its status to the MDEP Steering Technical Committee at the latter's thrice annual meetings.

Accomplishments

For more information, see the MDEP Annual Report 2017-2018.

Programme plan

2017-2018 Programme Plan

Products

Common Positions

• Generic Common Position DICWG-01: Common Position on the Treatment of Common Cause Failure Caused by Software within Digital Safety Systems.
• Generic Common Position DICWG-02: Software Tools
• Generic Common Position DICWG-03: Verification and Validation throughout the Life Cycle of Safety Systems Using Digital Computers
• Generic Common Position DICWG-04: Communication Independence
• Generic Common Position DICWG-05: Treatment of Hardware Description Language (HDL) Programmed Devices for Use in Nuclear Safety Systems
• Generic Common Position DICWG-06: Simplicity in Design
• Generic Common Position DICWG-07: Selection and Use of Industrial Digital devices of Limited Functionality (Update of 20 November 2014)
• Generic Common Position DICWG-08: Impact of Cyber Security Features on Digital I&C Safety Systems
• Generic Common Position DICWG-09: Safety Design Principles and Supporting Information for the Overall I&C Architecture
• Generic Common Position DICWG-10 : Hazard Identification and Control for Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems
• Generic Common Position DICWG-11: Digital I&C System Pre-installation and Initial On-site Testing
• Generic Common Position DICWG-12: Use of Automatic Testing in Digital I&C Systems as part of Surveillance Testing
• Generic Common Position DICWG-13: Common Position on Spurious Actuation

Technical Reports

• TR-DICWG-01: Technical Report on the Relational Structure of the Digital Instrumentation and Controls Working Group (DICWG) Common Positions

Last reviewed: 30 August 2017