Study on Probabilistic Safety Goals for Multimodule High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor Based on Chinese Societal Risks

Jinghan Zhang,Jun Zhao,Jiejuan Tong,Alejandro Clausse

doi:10.1155/2021/5523104

Abstract

Nuclear safety goal is the basic standard for limiting the operational risks of nuclear power plants. The statistics of societal risks are the basis for nuclear safety goals. Core damage frequency (CDF) and large early release frequency (LERF) are typical probabilistic safety goals that are used in the regulation of water-cooled reactors currently. In fact, Chinese current probabilistic safety goals refer to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and they are not based on Chinese societal risks. And the CDF and LERF proposed for water reactor are not suitable for high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), because the design of HTGR is very different from that of water reactor. And current nuclear safety goals are established for single reactor rather than unit or site. Therefore, in this paper, the development of the safety goal of NRC was investigated firstly; then, the societal risks in China were investigated in order to establish the correlation between the probabilistic safety goal of multimodule HTGR and Chinese societal risks. In the end, some other matters about multireactor site were discussed in detail.

Highlights

Nuclear energy is a special kind of energy source with many advantages and it is conducive to solving the energy crisis [1]
Because the qualitative safety goal cannot be used to guide the design and operation of nuclear power plant (NPP), two quantitative safety goals have been proposed based on the two 0.1% rule, which include early quantitative health objective (EQHO) and latent quantitative health objective (LQHO). e EQHO and LQHO have been derived from the societal risk of America; that is, the risk to residents of NPP cannot exceed other existing societal risks obviously; this is the so-called “two 0.1% rule.” e risk to the average individual in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant of prompt fatalities that might result from reactor accidents should not exceed 0.1% of the sum of prompt fatality risks resulting from other accidents to which members of the US population are generally exposed
According to the contents of probabilistic safety goals, we focus on early prompt fatalities and latent cancer fatalities caused by nuclear power plant operation which can be represented by accident mortality and cancer mortality in society, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Nuclear energy is a special kind of energy source with many advantages and it is conducive to solving the energy crisis [1]. The probabilistic safety goals (CDF and LERF) of Chinese nuclear power plants refer to the American nuclear safety goals, which are based on the societal risks of the United States rather than the societal risks of China. The formulation and evolution of United States National Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) has been studied in order to guide the development of probabilistic safety goals of multimodule HTGR.

Evolution of Safety Goals

Investigation into Chinese Societal Risk

Discussions

Findings

Conclusions