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Abstract RO158Full Paper + Presentation

Screening of Other External Hazards in Generation III+ and Generation IV Nuclear Power Plants

Authors

PrimaryRichard Rolland— Westinghouse Electric Company · rollanrw@westinghouse.com
Co-authorLuke Fiely— Westinghouse · luke.fiely@westinghouse.com
Co-authorNicole Gaussa— Westinghouse Electric Company · nicole.gaussa@westinghouse.com
Co-authorKyle Hope— Westinghouse Electric Company · hopekd@westinghouse.com
Co-authorTrent Joseph Kuhns— Westinghouse · trent.kuhns@westinghouse.com
Generation III+ and Generation IV nuclear power plants have a higher degree of reliability and safety features present in their design and operation. As a result, the internal events PRA core damage frequency (CDF) for these plants is lower than legacy nuclear power plants, typically by at least one order of magnitude. Regulatory Guide 1.200, Revision 2 and Regulatory Guide 1.200, Revision 3 include a requirement related to external hazard screening that modifies the 1.0E06/yr CDF screening threshold for plants with lower risk profiles. The requirement states that the screening value should be adjusted to the baseline risk. An unintended impact of this requirement is that rare external hazards for more reliable plants require much more detailed analyses to support screening out the hazard on the lower CDF basis. In some instances, this can result in the conclusion that the hazard reaches near the limit where it can not screen out, even though the hazard frequency is identical to legacy plants and mitigation strategies are similar. Examples of such hazards include satellite impacts and solar flares. In some instances, the dominant contributor to the hazard frequency is from events that would result in regional or global destruction, so the effort to calculate a high-fidelity estimate of the frequency at this range seems to be of low value. This paper will further examine the challenges and propose suggestions on a new methodology of screening of these low-frequency hazards for plants with very low baseline internal events PRA CDF values.
Status: The abstract has been accepted!
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