Research and examination of seismic safety evaluation and function maintenance for important equipment in nuclear facilities

Furuya, Osamu*; Fujita, Satoshi*; Muta, Hitoshi*; Otori, Yasuki*; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Okamura, Shigeki*; Minagawa, Keisuke*; Nakamura, Izumi*; Fujimoto, Shigeru*; Otani, Akihito*; et al.

Proceedings of ASME 2021 Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference (PVP 2021) (Internet), 6 Pages, 2021/07

Since the Fukushima accident, with the higher safety requirements of nuclear facilities in Japan, suppliers, manufacturers and academic societies have been actively considering the reconstruction of the safety of nuclear facilities from various perspectives. The Nuclear Regulation Authority has formulated new regulatory standards and is in operation. The new regulatory standards are based on defense in depth, and have significantly raised the levels of natural hazards and have requested to strengthen the countermeasures from the perspective of preventing the simultaneous loss of safety functions due to common factors. Facilities for dealing with specific serious accidents are required to have robustness to ensure functions against earthquakes that exceed the design standards to a certain extent. In addition, since the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) and the safety margin evaluation are performed to include the range beyond the design assumption in the safety improvement evaluation, it is very important to extent the special knowledge in the strength of important equipment for seismic safety. This paper summarizes the research and examination results of specialized knowledge on the concept of maintaining the functions of important seismic facilities and the damage index to be considered by severe earthquakes. In the other paper, the study on reliability of seismic capacity analysis for important equipment in nuclear facilities will be reported.

Development of seismic counter measures against cliff edges for enhancement of comprehensive safety of nuclear power plants, 8; Identification and assessment of cliff edges of NPP structural system

Nishida, Akemi; Choi, B.; Yamano, Hidemasa; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Takada, Tsuyoshi*

Transactions of the 25th International Conference on Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT-25) (USB Flash Drive), 9 Pages, 2019/08

In this research, the seismic safety of a nuclear power plant (NPP) is treated as a system in which the various cliff edge effects are identified and quantified based on the concepts of risk and defense in depth. An aim of this research is to develop a methodology for avoiding these cliff edge effects. In order to examine how the cliff edge state specified and evaluated in the seismic response analysis of the building system, we investigated the seismic isolation mechanism related to physical cliff edges and the modeling effects of the building system related to knowledge oriented cliff edges. In particular, with regard to knowledge-oriented cliff edges, we quantitatively evaluated the uncertainty within the same floor which is evaluated by a three-dimensional building model and tried to reflect it on the fragility evaluation. This paper presents and discusses these results.

Engineering applications using probabilistic aftershock hazard analyses; Aftershock hazard map and load combination of aftershocks and tsunamis

Choi, B.; Nishida, Akemi; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Takada, Tsuyoshi*

Geosciences (Internet), 8(1), p.1_1 - 1_22, 2018/01

AA2017-0570.pdf:1.96MB

https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8010001

After the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, we observed that aftershocks tended to occur in a wide region after such a large earthquake. These aftershocks resulted in secondary damage or delayed rescue and recovery activities. However, it is difficult to evaluate the hazards of an aftershock before the main shock due to various uncertainties. For possible great earthquakes, we must make decisions based on such uncertainties, and it is important to quantify the various uncertainties. We previously proposed a probabilistic aftershock occurrence model that is expected to be useful to develop plans for recovery activities after future large earthquakes. In this paper, engineering applications of the proposed approach for probabilistic aftershock hazard analysis are shown for demonstration purposes. One application is to use aftershock hazard maps to plan recovery activities. Another application is to derive load combination equations of the load and resistance factor design (LRFD) considering the simultaneous occurrence of tsunamis and aftershocks for the tsunami-resistant design of tsunami evacuation buildings and nuclear facilities.

Probabilistic risk assessment method development for high temperature gas-cooled reactors, 2; Development of accident sequence analysis methodology

Matsuda, Kosuke*; Muramatsu, Ken*; Muta, Hitoshi*; Sato, Hiroyuki; Nishida, Akemi; Ohashi, Hirofumi; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Takada, Tsuyoshi*; Hida, Takenori*; Tanabe, Masayuki*; et al.

Proceedings of 2017 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2017) (CD-ROM), 7 Pages, 2017/04

This paper proposes a set of procedures for accident sequence analysis in seismic PRAs of HTGRs that can consider the unique accident progression characteristics of HTGRs. Main features of our proposed procedure are as follows: (1) Systematic analysis techniques including Master Logic Diagrams are used to ensure reasonable completeness in identification of initiating events and classification of accident sequences, (2) Information on factors that govern the accident progression and source terms are effectively reflected to the construction of event trees for delineation of accident sequences, and (3) Frequency quantification of seismically-initiated accident sequence frequencies that involve multiplepipe ruptures are made with the use of the Direct Quantification of Fault Trees by Monte Carlo (DQFM) method by a computer code SECOM-DQFM.

Reliability enhancement of seismic risk assessment of NPP as risk management fundamentals; Quantifying epistemic uncertainty in fragility assessment using expert opinions and sensitivity analysis

Choi, B.; Nishida, Akemi; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Takada, Tsuyoshi*; Furuya, Osamu*; Muta, Hitoshi*; Muramatsu, Ken

Proceedings of 13th Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management Conference (PSAM-13) (USB Flash Drive), 8 Pages, 2016/10

In this study, we address epistemic uncertainty in structure fragility estimation of nuclear power plants (NPPs). In order to identify and quantify dominant factors in fragility assessment, sensitivity analyses of seismic analysis results are conducted for a target NPP building using a three-dimensional finite element model and a conventional lumped mass model (embedded sway rocking model), and the uncertainty caused by the major factors is then evaluated. The results are used to classify epistemic uncertainty levels in a fragility estimation workflow for NPPs in several stages, and a graded knowledge tree technique, which can be used for future fragility estimations, is proposed.

Reliability enhancement of seismic risk assessment of NPP as risk management fundamentals, 2; Quantifying epistemic uncertainty in fragility assessment using expert opinions

Takada, Tsuyoshi*; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Nishida, Akemi; Furuya, Osamu*; Muramatsu, Ken*

Transactions of the 23rd International Conference on Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT-23) (USB Flash Drive), 10 Pages, 2015/08

The assessment of seismic safety of nuclear power plant facilities has been performed by identifying and quantifying uncertainties in seismic probabilistic risk assessment (SPRA). For the evaluation process, all uncertainties are classified into either aleatory or epistemic uncertainty for their quantification. In this study, systematic evaluation of the epistemic uncertainty on the seismic fragility of structures and equipment is studied and implemented for a model NPP. There are two expert groups formed in this project: experts in the field of buildings and soil ground (CE experts) and experts in the field of pipe and equipment (ME experts). Along with ample results from relevant sensitivity analyses conducted, elicited opinions are carefully treated and classified into several specific areas and integrated into the form of knowledge tree technique (KTT), all of which can be utilized for future fragility estimation.

Load combination of aftershocks and tsunami for tsunami-resistant design

Choi, B.; Nishida, Akemi; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Takada, Tsuyoshi*

Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP-12) (USB Flash Drive), 8 Pages, 2015/07

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/53294

Occurrence of huge tsunami and numerous aftershocks are expected after a gigantic subduction earthquake occurs. Therefore, the important coastal structures (nuclear power plants etc.) must be designed against tsunami as well as ground shaking. When the action effects both from aftershocks and tsunami to the structure occur simultaneously, practically reasonable assessment of load combination from aftershocks and tsunami is needed. In order to treat the load combination problem reasonably, stochastic load combination technique can be used, which requires stochastic modeling of action effects from aftershocks and tsunami. Next, the reliability analysis follows, where load and resistance factors can be obtained under the condition that the conditional target reliability for a limit state function is given. This method is demonstrated at some sites in Japan. Finally, load and resistance factor design format for the tsunami-resistant design is proposed.

Probabilistic risk assessment method development for high temperature gas-cooled reactors, 2; Development of source term evaluation method

Honda, Yuki; Sato, Hiroyuki; Ohashi, Hirofumi; Nishida, Akemi; Muta, Hitoshi*; Muramatsu, Ken*; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Tanabe, Masayuki*

no journal, , 

We have been conducting a source term evaluation method development for high temperature gas-cooled reactors considering structural failures in the major components. We will present the outline of evaluation method and results of transient analysis for unprotected depressurized loss-of-forced cooling accident which may be initiated by Beyond-Design-Basis Earthquake.

Proposal of load combination of aftershocks and tsunami for the tsunami-resistant design for the Nankai Trough

Choi, B.; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Takada, Tsuyoshi*

no journal, , 

no abstracts in English

Study on reliability enhancement of seismic risk assessment of NPP, 1; Program plan and development of new framework of probabilistic models

Muramatsu, Ken*; Furuya, Osamu*; Fujimoto, Shigeru*; Hirano, Mitsumasa*; Muta, Hitoshi*; Takada, Tsuyoshi*; Itoi, Tatsuya*; Nishida, Akemi; Uchiyama, Tomoaki*

no journal, , 

This project, focusing on uncertainty assessment framework and utilization of expertise, and finally developing relevant computer codes to improve reliability of seismic probabilistic risk assessment (SPRA) and to promote its further use of the SPRA, develops methodology for quantification of uncertainty associated with final results from SPRA in the framework of risk management of NPP facilities. The following scopes are set. (1) Development of framework of probabilistic models for uncertainty quantification and Computer codes (2) Aggregation of expert opinion on structure/equipment fragility estimation and development of implementation guidance on epistemic uncertainty (modeling uncertainty) (3) Study on applicability of SPRA to model plant. In this report, program plan of our research and new probabilistic models and treatment of epistemic uncertainty will be explained as part 1.