Research Programs

Nuclear Systems Performance

Select project High Cycle Thermal Fatigue Due to Thermal Striping Risk-Informed Decision Making Risk Analysis in Infrastructure Protection Quantification of Safety Margins Incident Management Using Probabilistic Safety Assessment Organizational Factors in Nuclear Power Plants Outage Performance Evaluation of Operating US Light Water Reactor

Publications :

1. Smith, C.L., Apostolakis, G.E., and Pagani, L., “An Incident Management System for Nuclear Power Plants,” Proceedings of Topical Meeting on Risk Management , San Diego, California, June 2-5, 2003, American Nuclear Society, La Grange Park, Illinois.
2. Pagani, L., Smith, C., and Apostolakis, G., “Making Decisions for Incident Management in Nuclear Power Plants Using Probabilistic Safety Assessment,” Risk, Decision and Policy , 9:271-295, 2004.

Investigators :

• Professor G.E. Apostolakis
• L. Pagani
• L. Outten
• C. Smith

Support :

• Electricité de France

Incident Management Using Probabilistic Safety Assessment

Decisions by management during nuclear power plant operations may have safety-related and economic consequences, and may affect the relationship with external stakeholders such as regulatory authorities. Attributes such as worker exposure to radiation, potential radiation release, negative publicity, and regulatory intervention may conflict with concerns such as loss of income due to plant shutdown or reduced power. This work shows that the combination of probabilistic safety assessment and multi-attribute decision theory offers the potential for a structured decision-making methodology that could take into account risk‑related aspects (plant and worker safety, for instance), as well as important factors like economics and regulatory requirements. We demonstrate our decision analysis methodology using a case study in incident management, i.e., the decision making that follows events emanating from non-safety-related component failures. Particular attention has been paid to the assessment of tradeoffs among different objectives, especially when some of the consequences of decision options can be catastrophic.