Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Safety Operations of Nuclear Power Plants

With the increasing demand for energy in the world, nuclear power is becoming a more common form of electricity. Increasing demand for nuclear energy often brings about new challenges and concerns, especially in terms of safety and risk. This paper provides a brief history of nuclear power plant safety and the advances that are being made to reduce incidents, specifically core reactor damage that can lead to radiation leaks. The report includes a brief description of how a nuclear reactor works, what can lead to reactor damage, and the dangers of radiation exposure to humans. This paper provides an overview of the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), which is an extensive set of conditions, formulas and tests used to determine a plant's risk for an incident. The PSA determines the probability of an occurrence of any number of mechanical failures that could occur at a plant, and determines the severity of possible incidents. Research has shown that the PSA does not provide adequate basis for the development of an effective safety model. In order to compensate for this limitation, the living probabilistic safety assessment (LPSA) was developed to be able to adapt to the constant changes in a nuclear power plant and constantly update the plant's safety model. Our findings indicated that the LPSA is the future of the nuclear power plant safety risk assessment in not only reducing the number of incidents, but reducing the severity of the incidents as well.

Keywords: risk assessment, nuclear power plant, probabilistic safety assessment