TY - JOUR
T1 - An algorithm for enhancing spatiotemporal resolution of probabilistic risk assessment to address emergent safety concerns in nuclear power plants
AU - Bui, Ha
AU - Sakurahara, Tatsuya
AU - Pence, Justin
AU - Reihani, Seyed
AU - Kee, Ernie
AU - Mohaghegh, Zahra
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors wish to acknowledge the GSI-191 pilot plant for sharing data and for funding the related work performed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign through the grant BO5270. The authors appreciate all collaborators and authors of the previous publication [61] for their work on the GSI-191 pilot project, and for providing invaluable feedback from the nuclear industry perspective. Some of the research studies included in this paper are also partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy , Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP), Reactor Concepts Research Development and Demonstration (RCRD&D) under Award #17-12614. The authors would also like to thank all members of the Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) Laboratory ( http://soteria.npre.illinois.edu/ ) for their feedback on this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Emergent safety concerns often involve complex spatiotemporal phenomena. In addressing these concerns, the classical Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) has limitations in generating the required resolution for risk estimations. The existing dynamic PRAs have yet to demonstrate their feasibility for implementation in a plant. In addition, due to the widespread use of classical PRA in the nuclear industry and by the regulatory agency, a transition to a fully dynamic PRA would require a significant investment of resources. As a more feasible alternative, the authors have developed the Integrated PRA (I-PRA) methodology to add realism to risk estimations by explicitly incorporating time and space into underlying models of the events in the plant PRA while avoiding significant changes to its structure. In I-PRA, the failure mechanisms associated with the areas of concern (e.g., fire, Generic Safety Issue 191) were modeled in separate simulation modules, which were then integrated with the plant PRA through a probabilistic interface. This paper (i) provides theoretical foundations for the incorporation of time and space into PRA and (ii) introduces an algorithm that helps execute I-PRA in a way to gradually enhance spatiotemporal resolution of plant PRAs to efficiently address emergent safety concerns.
AB - Emergent safety concerns often involve complex spatiotemporal phenomena. In addressing these concerns, the classical Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) has limitations in generating the required resolution for risk estimations. The existing dynamic PRAs have yet to demonstrate their feasibility for implementation in a plant. In addition, due to the widespread use of classical PRA in the nuclear industry and by the regulatory agency, a transition to a fully dynamic PRA would require a significant investment of resources. As a more feasible alternative, the authors have developed the Integrated PRA (I-PRA) methodology to add realism to risk estimations by explicitly incorporating time and space into underlying models of the events in the plant PRA while avoiding significant changes to its structure. In I-PRA, the failure mechanisms associated with the areas of concern (e.g., fire, Generic Safety Issue 191) were modeled in separate simulation modules, which were then integrated with the plant PRA through a probabilistic interface. This paper (i) provides theoretical foundations for the incorporation of time and space into PRA and (ii) introduces an algorithm that helps execute I-PRA in a way to gradually enhance spatiotemporal resolution of plant PRAs to efficiently address emergent safety concerns.
KW - Dynamic PRA
KW - Fire PRA
KW - Generic Safety Issue 191 (GSI-191)
KW - Integrated Probabilistic Risk Assessment (I-PRA)
KW - Nuclear promise
KW - Risk-informed regulation
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ress.2019.01.004
DO - 10.1016/j.ress.2019.01.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85059841155
VL - 185
SP - 405
EP - 428
JO - Reliability Engineering and System Safety
JF - Reliability Engineering and System Safety
SN - 0951-8320
ER -