IEC 61513 Ed. 3.0 en:2026

Nuclear power plants - Instrumentation and control important to safety - General requirements for systems

IEC 61513:2026 provides requirements and recommendations for the overall I&C 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 I&C, and hence for the individual I&C systems important to safety.
 This document introduces the concept of a safety lifecycle for the overall I&C including the I&C 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 I&C systems important to safety, and the relations between the I&C architecture and the requirements of the individual systems important to safety.
 Standards such as ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 provide an overarching concept of system life cycle provisions covering product-related processes as well 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.
 This document applies to the I&C of new nuclear power plants as well as to I&C upgrading or back-fitting of existing plants.
 This third edition cancels and replaces the second edition, published in 2011. This edition includes the following significant technical changes with respect to the previous edition:
 - to align this document with the recent IAEA documents SSR-2/1 and SSG-39,
 - to review the existing requirements and to update the terminology and definitions;
 - to take account of, as far as possible, requirements associated with standards published or thoroughly revised since the second edition, IEC 62566, IEC 61226, IEC 62138, IEC 60987, IEC 63046 and IEC 63351;
 - to incorporate the technical requirements related to I&C systems and equipment from IEC 61226:2020, Annex A.