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ANS > Publications > Journals > Nuclear Science and Engineering > Volume 150
Modeling PSA Problems - II: A Cell-to-Cell Transport Theory Approach

Volume 150 · Number 2 · June 2005 · Pages 140-154
Technical Paper

P. E. Labeau, J. M. Izquierdo

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In the first paper of this series, we presented an extension of the classical theory of dynamic reliability in which the actual occurrence of an event causing a change in the system dynamics is possibly delayed. The concept of stimulus activation, which triggers the realization of an event after a distributed time delay, was introduced. This gives a new understanding of competing events in the sequence delineation process.

In the context of the level-2 probabilistic safety analysis (PSA), the information on stimulus activation mainly consists of regions of the process variables space where the activation can occur with a given probability. The evolution equations of the extended theory of probabilistic dynamics are therefore particularized to a transport process between discrete cells defined in phase-space on this basis. Doing so, an integrated and coherent approach to level-2 PSA problems is propounded. This amounts to including the stimulus concept and the associated stochastic delays discussed in the first paper in the frame of a cell-to-cell transport process.

In addition, this discrete model provides a theoretical basis for the definition of appropriate numerical schemes for integrated level-2 PSA applications.

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