Results from the application of systems analysis techniques to the study of reactor seismic safety

Systems and structural analysis techniques are being employed to calculate failure and radioactive release probabilities in an effort to provide insights into the seismic safety of nuclear power plants. An event-tree/fault-tree model of a nuclear power plant has been constructed and is being used to calculate these probabilities. Failure data for use in this model is generated from responses calculated by structural analysis codes using eathquake time histories as forcing functions. These responses are applied to fragility functions which describe the failure probability of a component as a function of the response it sees. A description is given of the event-tree/fault-tree model that has been constructed and preliminary system failure probabilities using this model are presented.