Effectiveness evaluation of the measures for improving resilience of nuclear structures against excessive earthquake, 2; Accident sequences analysis

Kurisaka, Kenichi ; Nishino, Hiroyuki  ; Yamano, Hidemasa   

The objective of this study is to implement an effectiveness evaluation of the measures for improving resilience of nuclear structures against excessive earthquake. In this study, those measures for improving resilience have an effect to enlarge their seismic safety margin. To evaluate effectiveness of those measures, seismic core damage frequency (CDF) is selected as an index. Reduction of CDF as an effectiveness index is quantified by applying seismic PRA technology. Target system is a loop-type next-generation sodium-cooled fast reactor, which adopts the building isolated from horizontal seismic ground motion. Even if the reactor vessel (RV) is buckled due to seismic shaking, it is expected that the RV maintains stable state without unstable failure such as rupture, collapse. Realistic consideration of the post-buckling behavior is regarded as a measure for improving resilience in this study. We set two cases for improving the resilience in the accident sequences analysis. The first case assumes low-cycle fatigue failure after buckling as the realistic failure mode of the RV, and we applied the fragility evaluated in our study. After the RV fatigue failure, the behavior of failure propagation is very uncertain. As the second case, the median seismic capacity to loss of reactor level is assumed to be slightly larger than that of fatigue failure of the RV. Analyses for both cases were performed, and the results were compared to the base case indicating significant reduction of CDF. Within the assumption, the measures for improving the resilience were significantly effective for decreasing CDF in excessive earthquake up to several times of a design basis ground motion. The seismic PRA technology could serve to the effectiveness evaluation of the measures for improving resilience of nuclear structures against excessive earthquake.