Emphasis Approved Alarm Annunciator range expanded for the Nuclear Industry

Safety is of paramount concern in the Nuclear Industry. In accordance with the requirements of the UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, every nuclear site licensee in the UK must justify their safety case in order to operate in the UK. This involves substantiating the safety certification of each instrument involved. With the increasing reliance on “SMART” instruments in safety systems, the problem of substantiating the software in these instruments has been a concern of the NII for a number of years. The EMPHASIS tool was developed to assist the nuclear site operators to achieve a common level of substantiation whilst eliminating duplication of effort. A key component in nuclear safety systems is the alarm annunciator. Alarm Annunciators are considered vital tools in modern safety systems because they provide an additional layer of protection in the safety strategy on the plant. The Omni8/16C range has been the alarm annunciator of choice at Sellafield Limited and a number of other major UK nuclear facilities for many years and was the worlds first Annunciator to be assessed by Emphasis. Due to the success of the Omni8/16C and in order to utilise all of the features available within the product it was decided to expand the range covered by Emphasis. All of the Annunciators within the Omniflex range that have been assessed use the exact same technology and firmware version as used in the Omni8/16C. This has allowed Omniflex to re-package the boards into custom built housings and offer direct replacement annunciators for older 3rd party manufacturers units such as the Rochester UC30 and MPAS90 Alarm Annunciators, thus allowing these and other old annunciators to be replaced by an Emphasis approved Annunciator. Additional features of the Omniflex Annunciator range have also been approved, now allowing for the addition of serial interface boards (for repeating of alarms typically into SCADA or DCS) and soft-set mode, which is used for more advance alarm annunciator functionality, providing total flexibility in configuration. The following Omniflex Alarm Annunciators have all been substantiated by EMPHASIS for use in the UK nuclear industry. Omni8C Alarm Annunciator Omni16C Alarm Annunciator Omn8P Alarm Annunciator Omni Micro Alarm Annunciator Omni16R Rack based Alarm Logic (replacement for MPAS90) Omni30 Alarm Annunciaotr (replacement for RIS UC30)

For more information on Emphasis Approved Alarm Annunciator range expanded for the Nuclear Industry talk to Omniflex UK Limited