A hybrid approach of partially applying BDD for seismic PSA quantification

Abstract

The binary decision diagram (BDD) method provides a means to calculate the exact probability of a fault tree, but cannot solve large fault trees for nuclear power plant PSAs. However, the BDD method can be used as a supplementary means to increase the accuracy of PSA quantification, especially for a seismic PSA which includes many non-rare events.Since it is difficult to solve a large PSA model using BDD method, several approaches have been developed that partially apply the BDD technique to small-sized branches of a large PSA model. This paper proposes an approach of partially applying BDD technique to large-sized branches. The results from the pilot application to a seismic PSA model shows that the partial BDD approach of this paper provides a relatively accurate way to quantify each sequence as well as the overall core damage in a seismic PSA model.