Impact of choice of fragility approaches on seismic risk quantification of nuclear power plants

Abstract

Development and evaluation of seismic fragility of structures and components is crucial in seismic probabilistic risk assessment of nuclear power plants. Simulation-based fragility approaches are a prevailing trend in the literature, while industry-recommended methodologies rely heavily on engineering judgment and deterministic analysis. In this paper, four critical components are selected, modeled and analyzed as a case study. Their fragilities are evaluated using both state-of-the-art fragility methods and code-recommended methods with approximate models. The impact of the choice of fragility approaches on the fragilities of the components and conditional core damage probability of the plant are assessed. The findings reveal that the recommended approaches employed with approximate models have limitations in estimating the median capacity of complex equipment. While there is a notable variance in the treatment of uncertainty among fragility approaches, its influence on core damage probability remains limited unless the component is the primary contributor to core damage.