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Title: Analysis of historic fires to determine most frequent challenging events

Journal Article · · Progress in Nuclear Energy

The fire probabilistic risk assessment framework for nuclear power plants relies on experimental data to determine expected fire behavior or to validate models to predict fire conditions in the plant. To support reducing the uncertainty in this experimental data, a research effort was conducted to identify the most frequent and challenging fire scenarios using historic fire data from nuclear power plants in the United States. To support this effort, an electronic version of the publicly available Updated Fire Event Database developed by Electric Power Research Institute was produced resulting in data on 2111 fire events, 540 events were labelled as being challenging fires with 74.2% of these challenging fire events being due to eleven selected fire types. In conclusion, of these fire types, electrical and electronic equipment, transient combustibles, and liquid fires were the most frequent of the challenging fires. The fire scenario specifics were characterized for each of the eleven selected types and then related to existing fire experiments.

Research Organization:
Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
Grant/Contract Number:
NE0008981
OSTI ID:
1977581
Journal Information:
Progress in Nuclear Energy, Journal Name: Progress in Nuclear Energy Journal Issue: C Vol. 146; ISSN 0149-1970
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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