Risk-informed analysis of the large break loss of coolant accident and PCT margin evaluation with the RISMC methodology

For general design basis accidents, such as SBLOCA and LBLOCA, the traditional deterministic safety analysis methodologies are always applied to analyze events based on a so called surrogate or licensing sequence, without considering how low this sequence occurrence probability is. In the to-be-issued 10 CFR 50.46a, the LBLOCA will be categorized as accidents beyond design basis and the PCT margin shall be evaluated in a risk-informed manner. According to the risk-informed safety margin characterization (RISMC) methodology, a process has been suggested to evaluate the risk-informed PCT margin. Following the RISMC methodology, a load spectrum of PCT for LBLOCA has been generated for the Taiwan’s Maanshan Nuclear Power plant and 14 probabilistic significant sequences have been identified. It was observed in the load spectrum that the conditional PCT generally ascends with the descending sequence occurrence probability. With the load spectrum covering both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties, the risk-informed PCT margin can be evaluated by either expecting value estimation method or sequence probability coverage method. It was found that by comparing with the traditional deterministic methodology, the PCT margin evaluated by the RISMC methodology can be greater by 44–62 K. Besides, to have a cumulated occurrence probability over 99% in the load spectrum, the occurrence probability of the sequence referred is about 5.07 * 10−3, whereas for the traditional surrogate or licensing sequence generally applied in the deterministic methodology, the occurrence probability is only about 5.46 * 10−5