Level-1 PSA on large fast breeder reactor (II); Evaluation of PLOHS frequency with the water steam system with decay heat removal capability

Hioki, Kazumasa 

The Systems Analysis Section has been performing a probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) on a large fast breeder reactor (FBR) since JFY 1992. The objective of the study is to apply the PSA method to a plant in a conceptual design stage, develop system models, perform quantitative analyses and systematic evaluation, supply valuable insights to enhance reliability and safety, and reflect them to the basic design. The plant analyzed is a 600MWe class large FBR designed by the Plant Engineering Section in the "Large FBR design study" that has been performed since JFY 1990. The failure probability of the Decay Heat Removal System (DHRS) can be reduced approximately two orders if the Water Steam System (WSS) can remove the decay heat for the first 24 hours. The frequency of PLOHS, however, is not reduced to less than one third because the WSS cannot be used for some initiating events and the PLOHS frequency is dominated by the failure probability of DHRS without the WSS. The failure probability of DHRS is dominated by the common cause failures (CCFs) of vanes, dampers and valves around the air-coolers in the Auxiliary Cooling System (ACS). Therefore it is most important to eliminate the CCFs. Assuming that the CCFs have been eliminated by diversifying the components, the frequencies of PLOHS were evaluated. An analysis has shown that if the WSS can remove the decay heat alone, the PLOHS frequency is reduced approximately two orders. In this case the PLOHS frequency is dominated by the failure probability of the DHRS right after the reactor shutdown. The most effective way to reduce the PLOHS frequency is to increasc the redundancy of the DHRS for the first few hours after reactor shutdown. It is known through the experience of preceding plants that the success criteria can be relaxed to one loop natural circulation instead of forced circulation in the best estimate evaluation. It was shown that under such condition, the PLOHS frequency can be as low as 10 ...