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The human factor in licensing and operating the next generation of nuclear plants
As human factors specialists working at the intersection of human performance and nuclear operations, we are witnessing one of the nuclear sector’s most significant transitions in decades. The emergence of small modular reactors, microreactors, and other advanced designs is reshaping the industry’s landscape. Digital instrumentation and controls, passive safety systems, and increased automation are creating opportunities for greater safety margins and more flexible operation. These same features also fundamentally redefine what it means to “operate” a nuclear plant. Interactions among human roles, automation, and passive systems shape how people maintain awareness, exercise judgment, and intervene when necessary. These developments affect both operational realities and the regulatory foundations on which nuclear safety is built.
Jennifer S. Butler, Darvin Kapitz, Robert P. Martin, Farrokh Seifaee, Ramu K. Sundaram
Nuclear Technology | Volume 170 | Number 1 | April 2010 | Pages 244-260
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 2008 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants / Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9462
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
AREVA NP's U.S. EPR is a 4590-MW(thermal) evolutionary pressurized water reactor that incorporates proven technology with an innovative system architecture to provide an unprecedented level of safety. One of the measures of safety is provided by probability risk assessment (PRA). PRA Level 1 concerns the evaluation of core damage frequency based on various initiating events and the success or failure of various plant event mitigation features. Determination of this measure requires mission success criteria, which are used to build the logic that makes up the fault trees and event trees of the Level 1 PRA. Developing mission success criteria for the wide variety of accident sequences modeled in the PRA Level 1 model requires a large number of thermal-hydraulic calculations. AREVA selected the MAAP4 code to perform these calculations because of its fast computation times relative to more sophisticated thermal-hydraulic codes. This is a unique application of the MAAP4 code, which was developed specifically for severe accident and PRA Level 2 analysis. As such, a study was performed to assess MAAP4's thermal-hydraulic response capabilities against AREVA's S-RELAP5 best-estimate integral systems thermal-hydraulic analysis code.