Current activity within the NRC and the nuclear industry seeks to exploit the benefits of PRA in risk-based approaches to relieve regulatory burden on the economically threatened nuclear power plants. The Accident Prevention Group has been developing the concept of an Integrated Risk Management Program (IRMP) toward such goals. A key element of an IRMP is an "operational risk model" of the NPP that can quantify the risk significance of some change that is made to the plant configuration or operations. The operational risk model (ORM) is similar in concept to "living PRA' and "dynamic PRA" but must accommodate not only changes in the hardware configuration but also changes that affect human reliability including effects of organizational, programmatic and procedural changes. The principal Phase I research objectives are to a) define the requirements for dynamic, or operational, NPP risk model that will support the needs of an Integrated Risk Management Program (IRMP); b) evaluate the alternative modeling approaches to meet the requirements; c) define the analytic requirements for most promising modeling approach(es) and assess the computer hardware and software required to support the model; and d) define any new or novel data acquisition requirements to support the operational risk model.
Anticipated Results:If the project is successfully carried out through Phases 2 and 3, the potential benefits are many for the nation. Through the application of Operational Risk Model at NPPs with dynamic data on plant status (trend data), operator reliability and status of programmatic element, preferably as a part of an Integrated Risk Management Program, the operating utility will be able to produce electrical power more safely, more reliably and less costly. This will benefit the commercial sector as well as the Federal Government. The Federal Government can apply the methodology in initiatives toward risk-based regulation to relieve burden of licensing on items marginal to safety.
