Analysis of core damage frequency from internal events: Expert judgment elicitation: Part 1, Expert panel results, Part 2, Project staff results

Quantitative modeling techniques have limitations as to the resolution of important issues in probabilistic risk assessment (PRA). Not all issues can be resolved via the existing set of methods such as fault trees, event trees, statistical analyses, data collection, and computer simulation. Therefore, an expert judgment process was developed to address issues perceived as important to risk in the NUREG-1150 analysis but which could not be resolved with existing techniques. This process was applied to several issues that could significantly affect the internal event core damage frequencies of the PRAs performed on six light water reactors. Detailed descriptions of these issues and the results of the expert judgment elicitation are reported here, as well as an explanation of the methodology used and the procedure followed in performing the overall elicitation task. The process is time-consuming and expensive. However, the results are very useful, and represent an improvement over the draft NUREG-1150 analysis in the areas of expert selection, elicitation training, issue selection and presentation, elicitation of judgment and aggregation of results. The results are presented in two parts. Part 1 documents the expert panel elicitations, where the most important issues were presented to a panel of experts convened from throughoutmore » the nuclear power risk assessment community. Part 2 documents the process by which the project staff performed expert judgment on other important issues, using the project staff as panel members. 7 refs., 3 figs., 6 tabs.« less