A Passive System Reliability Analysis for a Station Blackout
The latest iterations of advanced reactor designs have included increased reliance on passive safety systems to maintain plant integrity during unplanned sequences. While these systems are advantageous in reducing the reliance on human intervention and availability of power, the phenomenological foundations on which these systems are built require a novel approach to a reliability assessment. Passive systems possess the unique ability to fail functionally without failing physically, a result of their explicit dependency on existing boundary conditions that drive their operating mode and capacity. Argonne National Laboratory is performing ongoing analyses that demonstrate various methodologies for the characterization of passive system reliability within a probabilistic framework. Two reliability analysis techniques are utilized in this work. The first approach, the Reliability Method for Passive Systems, provides a mechanistic technique employing deterministic models and conventional static event trees. The second approach, a simulation-based technique, utilizes discrete dynamic event trees to treat time- dependent phenomena during scenario evolution. For this demonstration analysis, both reliability assessment techniques are used to analyze an extended station blackout in a pool-type sodium fast reactor (SFR) coupled with a reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS). This work demonstrates the entire process of a passive system reliability analysis, including identification of important parameters and failure metrics, treatment of uncertainties and analysis of results.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1344314
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2015 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants, 05/03/15 - 05/06/15, Nice, FR
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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