skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: A defense in depth approach for nuclear power plant accident management

Conference ·
OSTI ID:22531253
;  [1]
  1. Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, TW (China)

An initiating event may lead to a severe accident if the plant safety functions have been challenged or operators do not follow the appropriate accident management procedures. Beyond design basis accidents are those corresponding to events of very low occurrence probability but such an accident may lead to significant consequences. The defense in depth approach is important to assure nuclear safety even in a severe accident. Plant Damage States (PDS) can be defined by the combination of the possible values for each of the PDS parameters which are showed on the nuclear power plant simulator. PDS is used to identify what the initiating event is, and can also give the information of safety system's status whether they are bypassed, inoperable or not. Initiating event and safety system's status are used in the construction of Containment Event Tree (CET) to determine containment failure modes by using probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) technique. Different initiating events will correspond to different CETs. With these CETs, the core melt frequency of an initiating event can be found. The use of Plant Damage States (PDS) is a symptom-oriented approach. On the other hand, the use of Containment Event Tree (CET) is an event-oriented approach. In this study, the Taiwan's fourth nuclear power plants, the Lungmen nuclear power station (LNPS), which is an advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) with fully digitized instrumentation and control (I and C) system is chosen as the target plant. The LNPS full scope engineering simulator is used to generate the testing data for method development. The following common initiating events are considered in this study: loss of coolant accidents (LOCA), total loss of feedwater (TLOFW), loss of offsite power (LOOP), station blackout (SBO). Studies have indicated that the combination of the symptom-oriented approach and the event-oriented approach can be helpful to find mitigation strategies and is useful for the accident management. (authors)

Research Organization:
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - IEEE, 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016-5997 (United States)
OSTI ID:
22531253
Report Number(s):
ANIMMA-2015-IO-199; TRN: US16V0292102194
Resource Relation:
Conference: ANIMMA 2015: 4. International Conference on Advancements in Nuclear Instrumentation Measurement Methods and their Applications, Lisboa (Portugal), 20-24 Apr 2015; Other Information: Country of input: France; 6 Refs.
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English