IEC 61513 Ed. 3.0 en:2026

Full Description

IEC 61513:2026 General IC systems important to safety may be implemented using hardwired equipment, programmable digital equipment such as processor-based or HDL-programmed devices, or by using a combination of several types of technologies. This document provides requirements and recommendations for the overall IC which may contain one or several of these technologies. This document highlights also the need for complete and precise requirements, derived from the plant safety goals, as a pre-requisite for generating the comprehensive requirements for the overall IC, and hence for the individual IC systems important to safety. This document introduces the concept of a safety lifecycle for the overall IC including the IC architecture, and a safety lifecycle for the individual systems. By this, it highlights the relations between the safety objectives of the NPP and the requirements for the architecture of the IC systems important to safety, and the relations between the IC architecture and the requirements of the individual systems important to safety. Standards such as ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 provide an overarching concept of system lifecycle provisions covering product-related processes as well as business development. The scope of IEC 61513 refers to safety aspects and their demonstration, and significantly deepens the considerations of ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 in this field. The lifecycles illustrated in and followed by this document are not the only ones possible; other lifecycles can be followed, provided that the requirements stated in this document are satisfied. NOTE This document addresses the safety lifecycle of the overall IC and of the individual systems. Although systems not important to safety are not in the scope of this document, they are considered in the overall IC safety lifecycle, as they can constitute constraints for the design and qualification of systems important to safety (e.g. installation in common rooms, interfaces, sizing of support systems, coordination of installation and commissioning works). Furthermore, this document does not describe the handling of interfaces between organizations (owner, architect engineering organization, engineering organizations, commissioning organizations). In practice, responsibilities for plans, activities and documents will be allocated according to the contractual arrangements. 1.2 Application: new and existing plants This document applies to the IC of new nuclear power plants as well as to IC upgrading or back-fitting of existing plants. For existing plants, only a subset of requirements is applicable depending on the scope of the project, and this subset is identified at the beginning of any project. 1.3 Framework This document comprises four normative clauses (an overview is provided in Figure 1): – Clause 5 addresses the overall IC safety lifecycle: • defining requirements for the IC functions, and associated systems and equipment derived from the safety analysis of the NPP, the defence-in-depth and diversity concept of the NPP, the categorization of IC functions, and the plant layout and operational context; • structuring the IC architecture, dividing it into a number of systems and assigning the IC functions to systems. Design criteria are identified, including those to give defence in-depth and to minimize the potential for common cause failure (CCF); • planning the IC architecture. – Clause 6 addresses the requirements for the individual IC systems important to safety, particularly the requirements for systems built from programmable digital equipment. A differentiation of requirements according to the safety category of the IC functions (A, B or C) or according to the safety class of the systems (1, 2 or 3) is made when relevant; – Clause 7 and Clause 8 address the overall integration, commissioning, operation and maintenance of the IC systems. Figure 1 outlines the structure of this document to support navigation and readability. It is not intended to prescribe how this document is practically applied. Additionally, this document provides informative annexes: – Annex A highlights the relations between IAEA and basic safety concepts that are used throughout this document; – Annex B provides guidance to support comparison of this document with parts 1, 2 and 4 of IEC 61508. Annex B surveys the main requirements of IEC 61508 to verify that the issues relevant to safety are adequately addressed, considers the use of common terms and explains the reason for adopting different or complementary techniques or terms; – Annex C provides a proposal for the documentation structure for overall IC planning and IC system design; – Annex D indicates the main changes to be considered during the next update cycles of several SC 45A standards to align them to this revision of IEC 61513.