Criteria for assessing the quality of nuclear probabilistic risk assessments

The final outcome of a nuclear Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) is generally inaccurate and imprecise. This is primarily because not all risk contributors are addressed in the analysis, and there are state-of-knowledge uncertainties about input parameters and how models should be constructed. In this thesis, we formulate two measures, risk significance (RS) and risk change significance (RCS) to examine these drawbacks and assess the adequacy of PRA results used for risk-informed decision making. The significance of an event within a PRA is defined as the impact of its exclusion from the analysis on the final outcome of the PRA. When the baseline risk is the final outcome of interest, we define the significance of an event as risk significance, measured in terms of the resulting percentage change in the baseline risk. When there is a proposed change in plant design or activities and risk change is the final outcome of interest, we define the significance of an event as risk change significance, measured in terms of the resulting percentage change in risk change. These measures allow us to rank initiating events and basic events in terms of relative importance to the accuracy of the baseline risk and risk change.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Zhu, Yingli, 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael W. Golay.

• Nuclear Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33639

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33639