R&D Roadmap for Enhanced Resilient Plant Systems, Metrics, Scenarios, Risk Analysis, and Modeling and Simulation
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Jensen Hughes,West Chester, PA (United States)
The nuclear industry and the U.S. Department of Energy are jointly developing accident tolerant fuel (ATF) which has the potential to greatly improve the safety and economic performance of the current fleet of NPPs. The combination of ATF with the optimal use of FLEX equipment (deployed as an industry response to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) accident in 2012), enhancements on plant components and systems, incorporation of augmented cooling systems or new passive cooling systems, and improvements in fuel cycle efficiency, have the potential to render the NPPs more efficient and resilient to events (both internally and externally initiated) that have the potential to challenge the integrity of the fuel or plant containment. In this report, combinations of these plant improvements are called Enhanced Resilient Plant Systems. In order to accelerate the development and deployment of the components that comprise Enhanced Resilient Plant Systems, a well-integrated toolkit that is fuel/clad-, fuel cycle-, systems-, and scenario-centric is required to provide a ready platform for the analysis of the advanced ATF fuel and cladding materials that are being developed, as well as plant systems modifications to achieve enhanced resiliency. Since the deployment of these enhancements will comprise a risk/benefit tradeoff of their impacts on plant safety and economics, the envisioned toolkit will need to be capable to characterizing the multidimensional aspects associated with these evaluations and provide decision-makers with information that can optimize the technological, economic, and safety benefits that are to be obtained. The Risk-Informed Systems Analysis (RISA) Pathway of the DOE Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program initiated several research tasks to develop analytical capabilities to support the industry in the transition to the ATF and Enhanced Resilient Plant Systems. The general idea behind the initiative is the development of an integrated evaluation approach which combines the plant probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) models with Multi-Physics Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty (MP-BEPU) analyses in a seamless fashion. The integrated evaluation framework aims at enabling plant system configuration variations to be studied with speed and precision, including detailed risk and benefit assessments of introducing ATF and Enhanced Resilient Plant Systems into current LWR plants to achieve both safety and operational performance enhancements. The focus of this report is to present an integrated research and development (R&D) roadmap to identify and perform high value evaluations of proposed ATF and Enhanced Resilient Plant Systems concepts to identify both the technical (e.g. benefits to risk, safety, and operational margins) and the economic (i.e. business and cost) elements associated with industry adoption of the technology. The integrated evaluation approach will be developed to support the development, testing, qualification, licensing, and deployment of ATF and Enhanced Resilient Plant Systems technology that is capable of achieving substantial safety and economic improvements as well as timely widespread adoption by the US nuclear industry.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1467485
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-18-45220-Rev001; TRN: US1902751
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Risk-Informed ATF and FLEX Analysis for an Enhanced Resilient BWR Under Design-Basis and Beyond-Design-Basis Accidents
Risk-Informed MultiPphysics BestEestimate Plus Uncertainties (BEPU) Application Development of RELAP5-3D Perturbation Model