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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
Donghan Yu, William E. Kastenberg, David Okrent
Nuclear Technology | Volume 106 | Number 3 | June 1994 | Pages 315-325
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34961
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new approach is presented for evaluating the uncertainties inherent in severe accident management strategies. At first, this analysis considers accident management as a decision problem (i.e., applying a strategy compared with do nothing) and uses an influence diagram. To evaluate imprecise node probabilities in the influence diagram, the analysis introduces the concept of a fuzzy probability. When fuzzy logic is applied, fuzzy probabilities are easily propagated to obtain results. In addition, the results obtained provide not only information similar to the classical approach, which uses point-estimate values, but also additional information regarding the impact of using imprecise input data. As an illustrative example, the proposed methodology is applied to the evaluation of the drywell flooding strategy for a long-term station blackout sequence at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant. The results show that the drywell flooding strategy is beneficial for preventing reactor vessel breach. It is also effective for reducing the probability of containment failure for both liner melt-through and late overpressurization. Even though uncertainty exists in the results, flooding is preferred to do nothing when evaluated in terms of two risk measures: early and late fatalities.