Expert judgement methodology for failure anticipation in nuclear power plants

International audienceRisk analysis is a tool for investigating and reducing incertainty related to outcomes of future activities. We are interested here in failure anticipation in nuclear power plant. This involves very specific systems with little or no existing historical failures. In such cases, both engineering judgement and historical data are used to quantify uncertainty related to the predictions, like probabilities and failure rates. This paper is focussed on this aspect. The purpose is to provide an expert judgment elicitation methodology for anticipating the failures of a component, up to the end of its design life cycle period, including eventually an extension period