Abstract
Recently, plant construction throughout the world, including nuclear power plant construction, has grown significantly. The scale of Korea’s nuclear power plant construction in particular, has increased gradually since it won a contract for a nuclear power plant construction project in the United Arab Emirates in 2009. However, time and monetary resources have been lost in some nuclear power plant construction sites due to lack of risk management ability. The need to prevent losses at nuclear power plant construction sites has become more urgent because it demands professional skills and large-scale resources. Therefore, in this study, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) were applied in order to make comparisons between decision-making methods, to assess the potential risks at nuclear power plant construction sites. To suggest the appropriate choice between two decision-making methods, a survey was carried out. From the results, the importance and the priority of 24 risk factors, classified by process, cost, safety, and quality, were analyzed. The FAHP was identified as a suitable method for risk assessment of nuclear power plant construction, compared with risk assessment using the AHP. These risk factors will be able to serve as baseline data for risk management in nuclear power plant construction projects.
Highlights
The global plant construction market, including nuclear power plant construction, reached a scale of USD1.6 trillion as of August 2008 [1]
This study proposes the most appropriate method for risk assessment of Reactor Containment Building (RCB) construction by examining two decision-making methods: the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP)
By comparing risk assessments using the AHP and the FAHP, it was found that importance and priority either increased or decreased in all categories except for “Cost”, and the priority of the risk factors were changed
Summary
The global plant construction market, including nuclear power plant construction, reached a scale of USD1.6 trillion as of August 2008 [1]. While the number of nuclear power plant construction projects has been on the rise globally, numerous issues are being reported at construction sites, including delays in construction duration, rising construction costs, and safety accidents. This is due to the lack of an appropriate risk analysis and planning process at the beginning phase of nuclear power plant construction projects, considering that a nuclear power plant requires longer construction duration and involves a higher construction cost compared with other construction projects. Lee and Chang (2013) [3] performed a quantitative analysis using the AHP of the risks of six types of work, including civil engineering, construction, and machining. The risks inherent in a construction project were drawn from a wider perspective in the previous studies, and it is difficult to identify the specific of risks to each unit of work type [6]
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