{"id":2439,"date":"2009-12-04T13:18:09","date_gmt":"2009-12-04T11:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=2439"},"modified":"2009-12-04T13:49:49","modified_gmt":"2009-12-04T11:49:49","slug":"2439","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=2439","title":{"rendered":"about inspection optimization in nuclear energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an earlier randform post about scaling factors in nuclear power generation<\/a> I tried to explain what is implied if nuclear power generation is going to be increased. Among others I was talking about the risk of a nuclear accident which is going to rise by scaling things up. An important quantity in risk assessment in nuclear power generation is the core damage frequency<\/a>. The corresponding Wikipedia article links to a ressource by the Electric Power Research Institute <\/a> by which the probability of a damage of the nuclear core was in 2005 (i.e. the more dangerous type of fast breeder reactors, which will dominate in the future is included in this average only to a small amount) at 2*10^(-5)=0.00002 per reactor and year (there seem to be ressources which indicate that this frequency may be higher though). <\/p>\n

This means that is if one has approx. 500 reactors worldwide the likelihood of a core damage somewhere in the world was in 2005 one damage in 100 years, if we take again a factor ten as in the randform post about scaling factors in nuclear power generation<\/a> then this would rise to one core damage every 10 years. If we include an higher risk for fast breeders (which is a technology, which hasnt been tested exhaustively) then this likelihood rises again. Core damages are quite crucial because they can lead to a nuclear meltdown.<\/a><\/p>\n

Other risks are therefore often calculated in relation to the core damage frequency. While answering to a comment about Leukemia<\/a> I stumbled upon the “Studies on Applying Risk Informed In-Service Inspection for Indian Nuclear Power Plant and Heavy Water Plant” <\/a> by G. Vinod from the reactor safety division at the indian Babha Atomic Research Centre<\/a> in which probabilistic safety assessment techniques for indian nuclear power plants<\/a> which among others are using the core damage frequency are discussed in particular with regard to optimizing inspection<\/span>. A citation from the article
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

An optimum plan should be devised subjected to constraints such as risk to plant, cost of inspection and radiation exposure to workers, if the component is in radioactive area.\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Its not clear to me to what extent inspection optimization may lead to an increase of the core damage frequency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an earlier randform post about scaling factors in nuclear power generation I tried to explain what is implied if nuclear power generation is going to be increased. Among others I was talking about the risk of a nuclear accident which is going to rise by scaling things up. An important quantity in risk assessment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,25,33,26,2,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2439"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2447,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2439\/revisions\/2447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}