A guest post by Andrew O’Connor, of Relken Engineering Pty Ltd

Common Cause Failures (CCF) is one of the reasons why a classical reliability model of your system may dangerously underestimate the risk of failure. It directly attacks the benefits of providing redundancy by creating a single point of failure. In fact, studies have shown that CCF events may contribute between 20% – 80% of the unavailability of safety systems within nuclear reactors [Werner 1994]. This post will “Describe this type of failure (also known as common cause mode failure) and how it affects design for reliability. (Understand)” [CRE BOK III.A.4] [Read more…]